Big Brothers Don't Cry
by Sunruner
Summary: Yeah, sure, so he grew up to be an award-winning chef with a loving husband, but where did this jerk even come from? Lovino's life hasn't always been easy, but the one thing he's always known is that his family needs to come first, especially his two stupid little brothers. Multishipping, Prumano, Game of Cooks AU.
1. An Angry Shit Head

**Utopia, Are We All We Are?**

**Hello! I've been suffering from Itabros feels again, specifically Romano-induced ones, so a drabble turned into ****Game Of Cooks**** backstory that's just really fun. I like this AU a lot and have another project connected to it that I want to get done, but here you are!**

**An edit! April 8th 2013: because there are so many different ships in this story, I've added the names to the chapters where they apply! I promise nothing except that this story IS ultimately going to _end_ with Prumano because Game of Cooks is a Prumano-based story. Otherwise, happy shipping!**

**Carlino = Seborga.  
Nonna = Grandmano  
Dad = ? I don't know…  
Lars = Netherlands.  
Belle = Belgium.**

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_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

An Angry Shit-Head

When Lovino was very young, it was their mother who took care of them. It was that good, traditional kind of set up where Mama played housewife while Papa was away at work.

Away for three, four, five weeks at a time at work.

So it was Mama who taught her boys how to tie their shoes and button their shirts, and she took them camping so they could sit shivering in the rain wondering why they couldn't get the stupid fire to start. Lovino's memories of his mother covered the whole range of experiences, from _'mom I'm ten I can walk to school on my own!' _to _'my knee hurts now kiss it better'_.

His last memory of his mother is the movie-night they planned for that weekend night. He remembers sitting on the couch with Feliciano bundled in blankets bouncing happily next to him, and his baby brother Carlino being a fussy brat in his lap and trying to pull his hair.

He remembers his mother putting on her green rain jacket and muttering under her breath about something, then putting on her smile and kissing each of her three boys on the head. They were out of something, he'll never remember what, and she promised to be back soon with it so they could watch the stack of films sitting on the coffee table.

The last thing Lovino said to his mother was "If Carlo bites me I'm putting him in the dryer".

Carlino was only six years old when it happened, so even at the time it made sense why he cried the whole night wailing for mama to come home.

Feliciano was eleven and kept asking Lovino to call Papa, or call Nonno, or call anybody, but Lovino didn't want to admit that he hadn't memorized the numbers. He just told his brother to sit down and watch the stupid movie because she was going to be home any minute so shut up.

The door didn't open until Lovino woke up in a house with two brothers, no parents, and a table of half-eaten snacks. He scribbled a note to Feliciano saying where he'd be and left the house with his key and his bike, and by the time he reached Nonna and Nonno's house he was crying.

He'd only been thirteen at the time. His grandmother is a small woman with a big voice, but at the time Nonna wasn't strong enough to pick him up anymore. While Nonno called the police from the back room Lovino helped Nonna Vargas quickly pack up a bag of food from the kitchen, and then she hailed a taxi that took them and his bike back to the house.

His brothers were terrified and crying when they got there, and after punching him Feliciano made Lovino swear to never ever run off like that again. They followed Nonna around like ducklings for the rest of the day with Carlino spending most of it balanced on her arm or her hip to quiet his tears. Lovino only broke from her side when the sight of the police officer at the door terrified Feliciano so badly that he had to drag his brother into the bathroom and scream at him to stop screaming.

Their father called that afternoon, and said he'd come home as soon as he could.

When the police found her… their father's words changed to "I'm getting on the plane right now."

Their father wasn't a bad person. He'd never been a bad dad or a poor husband. But he'd been absent, and he hadn't been there, and he'd been working hard for everything they had but when Lovino was thirteen and someone had to tell him that his mother wasn't coming home because she'd been a woman walking alone on a dark street late at night…

Lovino knew his father had never meant to be a bad dad, but he also knew he'd turned into a shit son regardless.

Maybe it was because he kept his job with the shipping company that had him driving from one end of the country to the other every few weeks. Maybe it was because he was ashamed of asking his parents to look after his sons, so after only a year his visits home became shorter than Lovino ever remembered. Maybe it was him never showing up when Carlino needed him, or Feliciano needed him, or Lovino himself needed him. Maybe those were the reasons why Lovino knew he'd turned into a bitter and obnoxious asshole whenever someone brought the old-man up to him.

The one and only time Lovino's grandfather ever hit him was the first and last time he ever said how much he wished it had been the other parent shot and left for dead in an alleyway.

His grandmother's way of keeping the household at peace was to give the angry shit-head something worth doing. And she didn't call him an angry shit-head when he butchered the onions she put in front of him, but he'd never heard his Nonna swear before that time their Easter dinner decided to char on one side.

"You fucking worthless piece of cock-sucking-"

"_Nonna!?"_

Feliciano didn't believe him, Carlino was eight and accused him (in a eight-year old's voice) of being full of shit.

Actually Carlino said he was full of stupid, but it meant the same thing so Lovino was obligated at fifteen to hold his little brother upside down over the toilet until the tyke shrieked for Feliciano to come rescue him.

Cooking started as Lovino's chore, but it only stayed that way for a few weeks at most. Once his Nonna showed him how to hold the knife and whatever the vegetable was properly, moving the sharp steel blade through them in even strokes came naturally. It took him a few tries to get over the squeamish feeling of blood under his fingernails and ribbons of cold fat twisting in his grasp, but he did get over it, and he took his Grandmother's approach to pain management the first time he seared himself with a splash of hot oil:

"Cunt fucking whore!"

Except his grandfather was right-

"_Lovino!"_

Okay so maybe he got more than one smack in his childhood, but he kind of deserved that one.

When he was sixteen his grandmother's arthritis started getting worse in her hips, making it harder for her to walk for long periods of time. Lovino himself was also _sixteen_ and hadn't noticed that he was eating his weight in food every day until Nonna started just handing him the shopping list and money. Feliciano was no better, and between the two of them it was a wonder anyone else in the house ever got to eat at all.

"Go make him something." Actually it wasn't a wonder, it was Nonna actually paying attention.

"What? Why me I'm-" And Lovino picking up enough of her recipes that his complaints were only half-hearted.

"Lovino don't lie to me and say you're studying. I know you're not and I know you ate the rest of the pasta now go make your little brother something to eat!" Stupid Carlino not eating fast enough to actually make sure he got to eat.

But no, Lovino wasn't studying. He never studied, and he never scored very well on school tests either. It confused and frustrated the High School staff that the older Vargas brother was a waste of space in their classes, but his little brother Feliciano just showed up and scored A's. The only classes Lovino did well in were the ones where he worked with his hands, or there was something practical about it: sports, shop, home-economics, gym, metal-work, drafting.

His math mark dragged him out of chemistry. It did the same thing to his grade in physics and that ultimately made him give up drafting and the entire field of architecture and engineering.

He stopped taking gym and left the sports teams because after four years of high school, he couldn't stand the idea of spending another terrifying five minutes in the boy's change room. The sports themselves were fun, but the guy-talk about girls and who was hot and who was nice and who was sweet and smelled like chocolate drove him even further into the corner.

Lovino faked a crush on Belle for three years because it meant he could spend those three years being friends with Lars. It gave him an excuse to be awkward and quiet when they tried studying together, but all it took was one more D- in math after having Lars tutor him all semester before he gave up.

He just fucking gave up on school.

Nonno threatened to kick him out if he didn't graduate, Nonna called bullshit on the threat but told Lovino he'd still need a god-damned job.

Their dad actually fucking showed up for a few days around Lovino's eighteenth birthday and asked him if he could drive. By the time he left again looking old, washed-out and useless, Carlino had a new game-system, Feliciano was trying out his new paint-brushes, and Lovino had a chunk of cash in the bank for college that he seriously considered blowing on a used car.

Nonna swept in with a stainless-steel knife set.

Nonno got him a summer job working in a local restaurant, and Lovino almost didn't go back to school in August. Instead he taught Feliciano how to drive and he started packing Carlino's stupid lunches because damn that kid had better stop coming home so hungry that he ate a bunch of crap and then wasn't hungry for dinner the little shit.

Lovino oh-so-painfully agreed to go back for one last shot at getting the grade and graduating, but with Feliciano excelling and Lovino lagging _so far behind,_ he almost couldn't show his face in the English class they had together.

He kept shorter hours at the restaurant because he fucking needed something that wasn't homework waiting for him after classes. He didn't care if he was bussing tables or peeling vegetables or stirring pots, he needed an environment where people weren't going to ask him questions that didn't matter or make him talk about things he didn't want to talk about. From the restaurant he went home at night and helped his grandmother make dinner while Feliciano helped Carlino with homework. It was the middle brother who was around for things like fixing Nonno's car when the old man couldn't get down and see what was wrong. And it was Carlino who got stuck with the dishes and the scrubbing chores that everyone but Nonna was too busy for, but damn it Nonna was old Lovino'd rather just give her a cup of tea and her soap operas.

And his marks suffered, and his self-esteem suffered, and when Lars started going steady with Madeline that Christmas, Lovino had to deal with Feliciano catching him breaking down in the fucking school bathroom.

"Vino?"

"Fuck off-!"

He didn't like girls. He'd never liked girls and after having to stand there and be fucking _happy_ that his friend with someone-fucking-_else_ it was like a great big fucking sign stapled to his back. It wasn't that Lovino didn't like anybody: he just didn't like _girls, _and he actually really did like _guys._

So he was gay, a faggot, a piece of shit and he'd known if for longer than he could think right now, but right now he was just trying to stop the fucking tears and swallow his god-damned fear because what the hell was he supposed to do if anybody found out? Lars wouldn't come near him again, he'd treat him like he had the fucking plague. His grandparents were catholic: as a family they still fucking went to church every Sunday!

Nonno really would kick him out.

He'd actually kick him out of the house.

And Romano wasn't going to graduate and his shitty wage at the restaurant was fine for giving pocket change to his brothers or springing for a nicer cut of meat for dinner, but fuck him if he could live off of it.

Pay rent, buy groceries, car insurance, health insurance- and a thousand fucking other things.

His fucking _dad_ wouldn't even be worth telling except he'd probably take his god-damned birthday money back.

His life was just all shit- _shit- shit!_

"Lovino stop-" He heard a sound he didn't know and then his brother's stupid arms were around him. "Stop, stop it you're scaring me: what's wrong?"

"I said _go away-_"

"And I said no!" It almost turned into a scuffle, but Feliciano just wasn't tiny anymore, and as much as Lovino wanted him to let go he didn't want to fucking hurt him.

So he gave up, because that was all he was fucking good at and he just let his idiot brother hug him and hold him tight around the shoulders. And he cried, because he was eighteen and the world was getting ready to chew him up and spit him out into the gutter.

"You don't cry…" Feliciano sounded like he was whispering, but then Lovino realized he was choking up too. "I cry a lot, and Carlino does it sometimes, but you don't…" He didn't want to hear this- "You _never_ cry and you're always running around doing things, so please tell me what's wrong."

He really hated him for saying something like that right now, but it was a stupid lie and Lovino just put his arms around his brother and pulled him in tight.

"I'm scared-" So fucking scared…

"You don't get scared." Stupid little shit if he wanted Lovino to answer then he couldn't fucking cut him off it wasn't _fair._ "I've never seen you get scared before. You don't get scared."

"Well now I am…"

And Feliciano didn't try to choke the words out of him. They just hid in the bathroom until the next bell rang, and Feliciano cut class for the first time in his life to spend the rest of the day with him. They didn't do a lot, but they weren't in class and they didn't talk about what was wrong.

They were there to pick Carlino up from his middle school too, not because he was too young to walk home and needed to be picked up, but because Feliciano decided Lovino needed to see their little brother. Stupid shit turned out to be right…

"See, I'd believe you except you just told me he was crying." It was cold enough for there to be snow on the ground, but his brothers' favourite treat was ice-cream, so Lovino took them both to the mall where they picked up cups of hot-fudge and vanilla.

"But he was! Look, his face is still red." And Feliciano was honest to God a stupid shit.

"Fuck you I did not cry."

"See? Feli don't tell stupid lies." And Carlino was cool enough that he got to steal a spoonful of creamy chocolate goodness from Lovino's cup.

In the end, somehow, Lovino did graduate from highschool. But it meant he had to swallow a lot of his pride and that made the whole experiences one of the hardest things he'd ever done. He had to buckled down and get Feliciano to help him with writing assignments in English, and go crawling back to Lars for one last shot at passing a math class he'd failed twice. He broke down his own principles and asked Madeline and Belle for help with the only science class he had left, and to make up for it he threw himself headlong into things that actually mattered to him.

Lovino Vargas barely graduated, and he didn't go to commencement, and he ran away from Prom too. He spent the party night when the rest of his classmates were out dancing in dresses and suites working hard in the tiny kitchen where the sous chef had taken a shining to him. He spent all night doing prep work on the line instead of standing in the back rinsing bowls.

On the day he was supposed to walk across an empty stage wearing a stupid robe and shake the hand of an admin who would be as shocked to see him as everyone else, Lovino did a ton of shopping at the market his grandmother liked, and he cooked a full Italian meal with Nonna agreeing not to hover and watch him do it.

Lovino probably would have gone to prom if a week earlier Lars hadn't confronted him and demanded to know why he hadn't asked Belle to go with him.

Lovino almost went to commencement, but their father was in town. At the time he told himself he didn't want to give the jerk the satisfaction of watching him do the whole routine. Years later, he was man enough to admit that he wanted to show the man something he actually excelled at, not dress up something he'd barely achieved.

"Are you thinking about college?" Unfortunately, a good meal wasn't all it took to fix too many years of bad blood between them, because no: Lovino was not thinking about college. "How well does the restaurant pay you? Are they willing to take you on full time?"

"They might…" He'd been told he could try working the full hours this summer, but he knew there had been talk on the management side of things. It was a very small restaurant, only about six tables, hiring someone on for full wages would take a chunk out of their bottom line if they didn't need to have him.

"Why not culinary school?" Why not what school? His father was just a suit and a tie holding a fork at their dinner table, but for the first time in a long time Lovino actually listened to him. "I'd pay to eat a meal like this, and I can taste the difference between this and what your Nonna makes." Shit.

"Did I screw it up?" Lovino's eyes swung right around to where his grandmother was sitting in her pink sweater and shawl, a floral pin on her shoulder under the hair she'd curled for this dinner: just because they weren't going out didn't mean she wasn't going to dress up, damn it. She just lifted her thin grey eyebrows up and then took a sip of her wine though, her lips smiling over the smear of lipstick on the glass.

"Did I say anything?" No, but if he screwed up his own god-damned graduation dinner then-

"Vino's is better."

Either Feli or Nonno kicked Carlino off his chair, Lovino couldn't tell because the light pat on his wrist from Nonna turned into a bone-splintering hold.

"Mama he was just telling a joke-"

"He's being stupid: I think I forgot the garlic so just-" ow, ow_, ow!_

"_You_ are going to culinary school in September." Oh no, she was doing her _'I've raised three teenagers going on four now do what I say you little shit'_-face, Lovino would have been risking serious bodily harm by ignoring her.

"Yes, Nonna, now please I-"

"And _you_," Lovino didn't expect it, and neither did his dad, but Nonna's other hand shot out like a viper and snagged the ear of the grown man sitting next to her and across from the grandson she'd already latched onto. "You are going to pay for it."

"Mama I never said I wouldn't, he's my son!" Good god she was strong-!

"Rina enough, let them go."

"Don't order me around, old man."

"I'm not ordering you: I just don't want a disfigured son or a grandson who can't button his own shirt."

That was probably the third time Lovino had ever heard either of his grandparents use the other's first name, but if you'd been married since the last ice-age then it had to happen sometime. Either way it worked and he got his hand back while his dad was left nursing his twisted ear, but both of them were still a little wary of Nonna grumbling and stabbing her pasta between them with her fork.

"No punk cooks better than I do: a chef maybe, but not a punk." Which was Nonna for _'go become a trained chef or I'm never feeding you again you angry shit-head.'_

So, right after five hellish years of high school, living in his grandparents' house and taking care of his two stupid brothers, Lovino… went… back to school?

_Shit._

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**See you soon!**


	2. An Awkward Disappointment

**Slut Like You, True Love, Whole P!nk playlist, then Family Portrait.**

******Romano is a character plagued by low self-esteem in the canon, so baby has some problems with that here too. I also think I have to edit a detail in Game of Cooks, because I THINK at one point it says "a car-crash and things they didn't talk about", but there are no car-crashes in this story...**

* * *

_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

An Awkward Disappointment

That summer proved a couple things to Lovino.

One: his dad maybe wasn't a horrible piece of shit because he was fucking around for the whole fucking three months and it didn't suck.

Two: Community colleges didn't give a shit what you scored in Bio Class, they just cared that you liked whatever you applied for and that you'd actually do the god-damned work they assigned you if they gave you a seat.

Three: Lovino definitely cared about working in the restaurant industry, because he worked a hot Chicago summer in a cramped kitchen with a busted air-conditioner… and he was so frustrated when they explained that they couldn't hire him full time, but wanted to.

In August he was back in school, but it didn't feel like high school. He had books, but most of them were for recipes, catalogues of produce and proteins, and one big-ass textbook he only needed once a week for health and safety.

His interest in chemistry came back without the math this time: how to play with heat when baking, how to properly combine ingredients for a sauce, what made a glaze versus a gnash, etc.

It was hands-on, it was interactive, it came with the punishment of eating whatever you fucked up so don't fuck it up. It was going to be the longest and shortest six months of his life, which was why when he was still barely three weeks into it Lovino was startled and maybe even a bit scared when a familiar voice called out to him.

"Lovino!" Because that voice had no right to catch him flipping through a list of French recipes he'd never heard of and could barely pronounce. He was supposed to be on his way to the student lounge and café for a cup of coffee and some study time, but damn him he'd never heard of "_foy-graz_" before and who opened up a duck and seriously thought '_Yes, this liver is for me.'_?

"Belle…?" Her face confused him, her voice confused him, the fact that she was there at all under the bright fall sunlight and the rows of trees that stubbornly refused to change colour- it was wrong to him. Lovino and Lars had been the same age in the same grade, Belle was a year younger and one grade below- he'd just graduated, she hadn't yet, why was she here?

It took until Lars' caramel-blonde sister had her arms around him in a friendly, clinging hug that Lovino remembered that he'd just walked out of a Saturday-afternoon workshop.

"I can't believe I found you! How was your summer?" _Found_ him? Belle had a green ribbon in her hair that matched the pleated skirt that went down to her knees. She had a red sweater with their high school's crest on the sleeves and covering her white blouse, her outfit borderline too light for the creeping autumn cold. When she grinned with her rose-pink lips and a shine over her green eyes, he wasn't completely sure how he was supposed to answer the question.

"It was alright." So he went for a lame response instead of anything useful. "Made some money."

"You missed commencement…" Yeah, she would know about that: Lars would have been at the ceremony. "Prom too."

"I was working." The simple truth.

"They wouldn't give you the night off?" Saying no would be a fib or a lie, saying yes would prove he was an asshole. Lovino found himself with his jaw clenched trying to come up with something in the middle as Belle's bright-eyed expression started to fade. She was shorter than him by a few inches, enough that his eyes were level with her forehead, and at some point she'd just stopped growing so he really did feel larger than her in size. It was uncomfortable.

"Something like that…" He almost asked how Lars was doing as a segue, but something stopped his tongue and Lovino made himself fumble for a different topic. "How's senior year treating you?"

Standing stupidly still trying to have this conversation was what made it too hard. Lovino eventually convinced her to walk with him, or maybe it was Belle who made the first move. He led the way because he already knew the small campus well enough to locate the essentials: library, classrooms, practice kitchens, lounge, coffee.

He'd never touched the stuff at home or in high school, but Lovino already knew too much of his pay-cheque was going towards the black froth that was keeping him awake and paying attention to his lessons. Because he knew Belle didn't work he paid for a tall cup of hot-chocolate and coffee, the mixture pleasing her as they took a seat and kept trading mild comments and friendly-ish questions.

Apparently she'd worked his location out of Feliciano, who Lovino promised to beat up when he got home. That was when the conversation turned.

"You don't mean that."

"Mean what?" Lovino had never seen Lars' little sister look so offended, but the way she pinched her lips like that and sat up a little straighter on her stool- yep, that was offense on her face.

"That you'd actually hit him for telling me where you go to college."

"Of course I would?" Was she serious? "Belle, we're brothers. It's what brothers do."

"That's terrible! You'd actually beat him up like a dog?"

"I'd never kick a dog." Apparently this was also the wrong thing to say because she made the ceramic bottom of her mug hit the table with a loud crack. "Belle! It's not like I come up behind him with a stick."

"Then what do you do?"

"I don't know?" What a stupid question. It made sense that Lars wouldn't physically fight with his sister, but Lovino didn't like being put on the hot-seat about the issue. "Usually shout his name or something, and if he doesn't run then whoever cries out first loses?"

"And what about Carlino?"

"Carlino's eleven." If Carlino pissed him off that much then Lovino'd already won. The only time he'd settle for anything less was if his _little_ brother was mad, because there was no harm in letting him get the upper hand and try to put Lovino in a choke-hold if it would settle the issue.

"That's so awful…" She was over-reacting, but she went back to drinking her cocoa and coffee and Lovino just rolled his eyes. She was taking things the wrong way.

They tried having a decent conversation after that, but ultimately Belle didn't tell him why she'd taken a forty-minute bus ride trying to find the campus, and then Lovino himself, on a Saturday afternoon.

When he got home that night he also didn't beat Feliciano up, but when he packed his and Carlino's lunches for Monday morning he did stick a whole glob of marmite in his brother's sandwich.

Monday evening Feliciano was waiting for him to come home, and as soon as Lovino stepped through the door he had to sum up every ounce of "FUCK YOU I'M OLDER" in his body to wrestle his seventeen-year-old little brother to the floor.

That Christmas was the first time in five years that their dad was there on Christmas morning. He was Nonna and Carlino's gift and Lovino had grudgingly been in on the secret: he was the one who drove out to the airport in the heavy snow to pick him up.

Something was a little different about him though.

Nonno was a large man, even with his age starting to catch up to him he wasn't a small, wrinkly old guy with a walker and lazy gums. His hair was still decent despite the healthy amount of grey spread through it, and his face was riddled with laugh and age lines, but there were days you could easily connect the man sitting in his arm chair to the figure who'd smelled like pipe smoke and bounced each of the brothers on his knee.

Lovino liked to think of himself as fully grown, but both him and Feliciano were still lanky, a bit thin. It was Lovino who was starting to thicken out more, to fill in his shoulders and neck, the trunk of his body a little heavy from good food but still strong from running across campus and constantly working on his feet. Carlino was twelve so shut up.

They all had dark hair with Feliciano's staying the lightest because their Mama had been a red-head. Their Nonna was completely grey, but their dad had always had a thicker head of hair like his father. He was supposed to have Nonna's darker complexion though, the one that Lovino had inherited from them both. With their dad enjoying his middle age, his mid-section had always been a bit thicker, maybe even more so over the last few years since Mama had passed…

So when he was sitting next to the Christmas tree that year, Lovino noticed the difference between what he remembered and what he saw. He didn't say anything though, not with Carlino jabbering at their dad and Feliciano poorly pretending that he was too old to care as much as he did about the surprise guest.

"Are you okay?" Lovino had to ask the question once all the gifts had been torn open and the living room was a mess for his brothers to clean up. He was whisking eggs in a bowl for Christmas breakfast when their dad came in looking for a coffee refill, and he had to know why the hand that reached past him for the coffee pot was pale as a sheet and freakishly thin.

"A little jet-lagged, why?" Their dad's eyes were very dark, but they'd always been dark. Lovino just couldn't call up enough memories of his face from this close to tell if they looked sunken or not, but he was pale.

"Nothing."

He was pale.

And over the next few days Lovino noticed a heavy, heaving cough that wouldn't go away, or that kept leaving him completely breathless every time it caught him.

"Your program is half-done, right?" but still the old man would just wear through it, and usually end off with a crooked smile that hid some kind of pain he wouldn't tell them about. He figured out too fast for Lovino's liking that the best way to shut him up was to just talk about the terrifying future.

"Uh, yeah, I'll finish in March…" the program had started in August, but there were two weeks missing for Christmas and the holidays. When their dad started hacking again like he was dying Lovino snapped back to the original topic. "Look, are you sure you feel-?"

"Don't worry about getting a job right away…" At least he got the idiot to sit down, but getting away for long enough to grab him a glass of water was a lot harder. "If you want to be a chef then you should try travelling."

"Right, travelling where exactly?"

"Why not Italy? We have family around Rome." Yeah, family he'd never met. "That's my fault." It set off an alarm in Lovino's brain when he heard his dad's voice suddenly soften. His eyes did something to the rest of his face that made the pale skin and hollow cheeks stand out even more. "It's my fault… after your mother…"

"…"

"I…"

They couldn't do it. Six years after the fact, they still couldn't talk about her.

Lovino never would forgive himself for never just sitting down and _talking_ about her.

Or talking about _him_, because their dad hid what was wrong and he did a good job of it. It took a lot to catch him in the act, but one give-away was how he barely ate anything dished on his plate. Lovino was too interested in the conversation at the dinner for the first week after Christmas, but by the time New Years was looming he'd started counting how many bites the man actually ate versus how many times he just stirred his fork over his plate.

The box of daily pills he thought he'd kept hidden while sharing Lovino's room was another serious hint. Lovino was no pharmacist, he didn't know what any of them were for, but there were far too many round and oblong and different-sized little pellets of medicine in the half-hidden blue box for his peace of mind.

But maybe it could have been a whole lot of nothing… except for the angry murmurs he started hearing behind his grandparents' bedroom door at night.

The house where they lived was actually a three-story town house, narrow but tall and with barely enough space for everyone. Feliciano and Carlino had always shared a room because Lovino was older and hahahaha!, but the walls were thin and the space was minimal.

He was actually using the desk in his little brothers' room the night it happened. He was testing himself on herbs and exotic ingredients with Feliciano reading on his bed behind him when both of them heard the crashing and thumping of Carlino racing up the steps.

"_Vino!"_ And they heard Carlino tearing into the wrong bedroom looking for him, all three of them meeting in the hall next to their grandparents' room.

"Hurry up, get the car!" Carlino's face was red from the cold, his hat missing and his knit blue scarf still holding snow-flakes and ice from being outside. Their dad had taken him sledding in the park near the house. He'd been trying all week to talk all three of them into going skiing in the January snow, but now Carlino was standing in his wet boots and gloves, yanking on Lovino's arm hard enough that he nearly sent them both tumbling down the stairs.

"Slow down! What's wrong?"

"It's dad! It's dad hurry just come _on!_"

Carlino just wasn't small enough to pick up and hold when he was upset anymore, but he still had that way of looking up with his green eyes and pleading with them without crying.

Lovino didn't lace up his boots and he didn't bother with a jacket. There was three feet of snow outside but he didn't care: Feliciano had shovelled their part of the side-walk that morning. He made Carlino point him in the right direction but then sent both of his brothers back to get the car, tossing the keys to Feliciano just as their Grandmother came out asking what was wrong.

It wasn't hard to find him. They didn't live in a bad neighbourhood: if a man fell over in the snow with his son screaming that something was wrong then someone was going to do something.

"Dad! Dad what happened? Are you ok- yes! Let me see him he's my dad!" Someone had called an ambulance, someone else had brought out a blanket and straightened him where he'd fallen. There was a stain of vomit on the snow where the man Lovino'd spent six petulant years hating had been sick either before or after collapsing.

"Stop it- I asked you! I fucking asked you now don't pull a stunt like this! _Dad!"_

He didn't wake up when Lovino shouted at him in English demanding to know what was wrong.

"_Please, please, please, papa don't do this…" _

He didn't move when Lovino touched his face and begged him in Italian to say anything.

Their father didn't die that night out in the snow. The ambulance arrived at the same time as the car with their family in it, so the paramedics placed him on a gurney and, since there was no room in the car, Lovino went with them in the ambulance. During the ride they asked him what medications his father was on, and Lovino only knew there were a lot- not what their names were.

"Does he have any allergies?"

"I don't know…"

"Any previous medical conditions?"

"I don't…"

They got more out of his wallet than his son: they found his health insurance number. It meant there was a bed and a room and medical team waiting when they got to the hospital. It meant that Lovino had a chance to let the sobbing frustration out in private before washing his face and being ready when his brothers and grandparents arrived.

Nonno had the box of medicines from their dad's suitcase, which meant he knew part of what was wrong.

Nonna refused to speak to Nonno, which meant she'd had no idea.

Carlino refused to let go of Lovino's hand all night, even after their dad was wheeled into the room on a hospital bed. There was an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose and tubes dripping fluids into his arms and hands. They could see how thin he really had become through the medical gown, and when Nonno stepped outside Lovino pretended to be asleep next to Carlino so Feliciano and Nonna could cry in peace.

The youngest brother was his priority that night: he asked the nurses for an extra blanket to keep him warm. He removed Carlino's wet jacket and gloves while he slept so they would dry. He didn't move for six hours so he wouldn't wake up the little boy laying on him. He handed Feliciano his bank card and told him to get everybody something to eat, and when Nonno tried giving him a twenty dollar bill to cover it he just waved it off.

So scratch that, his whole family was his priority. When Nonna was too tired for more crying and swearing at her son, Lovino had her take his seat and stroke Carlino's sleeping head for comfort. He made sure Feliciano actually ate the sandwich he brought back for himself, and he went hunting for another chair so Nonno could sit instead of standing silently watching his son breathe.

"It's cancer…" His grandfather whispered once he seemed sure that it was only the two of them left still awake. "My brother had the same problem, but he's known for a while and didn't want to worry you boys or your grandmother."

He wasn't on a respirator, and the plastic mask didn't make any noise. A nurse had come in a few hours ago and turned off the beeping of the heart-rate monitor. She hadn't seemed worried when she checked the chart, but she'd stepped lightly, moved carefully, and left quickly. It had probably been as much for their comfort as to keep out of sight.

"How long is a while?" It was so quiet in the room that Lovino was hesitant to speak, he just murmured things that sounded like words and didn't move from where he was standing with his hands in his jean pockets. He didn't want to turn his head- what if his neck popped and broke the silence?

"A year." Nonno copied his quiet voice, but with them watching the pale blue light spread over the washed out patient in front of them, and the milky glow of the corridors beyond the private space intruding on their family's uneasy sleep, Lovino heard a strange sound.

He heard a strange sound, and he saw his grandfather take such a deep breath that it surprised him to see how big he could puff himself up. And it scared him when he thought he saw a glossy look on the old man's eyes, and he didn't understand the way his mouth twisted and started to tremble.

"Nonno-?"

"You shouldn't…" Too much air escaped him for two little words, and that rush made Nonno stop speaking for a moment and thin his wide lips, shaking his head a little and letting one silver tear loose down his aged face. "Don't cry in front of the people you need to protect. My father told me that." Then he shouldn't have been crying- Nonno wasn't supposed to cry. Nonno was loud and strong, and even if something made him mad that didn't mean he would ever shed a tear over it.

Lovino wanted this to stop and he wanted it to go away: he didn't want to look at the bed and see someone he'd hated for so long suddenly begging sympathy from him. He didn't want to listen to his grandmother weep or know his baby brother at twelve was going through something too similar to what Lovino had endured at thirteen. He didn't want a heart-to-heart about tears at three in the morning in a silent hospital room. He didn't want to grow up or acknowledge that screaming in the back of his mind telling him that without an absent father in the middle there was only their weeping grandfather and Lovino's shitty start at life for his brothers to look up to.

He didn't want this.

He wasn't ready for this.

He couldn't _do_ this-

"Nothing you have ever done-" So he understood it even less when instead of being allowed to panic and freak out in the silence, his short, crying, aging old grandfather put light arms around him, and they tried to hold him tight and strong but it felt like paper and string. "-has failed to make us proud."

"I haven't done anything-"

"You do more than you know, Lovino… You really do…"

He really had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

"My father is sick, I mean he's really sick and we don't know what's going to happen."

But he had to talk to the college and his program leader. He had to reach out through the system for anyone who would listen.

"I want to continue, I honestly do, but this is serious. _Please._"

And somehow someone did listen.

It was a small college, not a rigid institution. Lovino produced more documents than they even needed to prove what was wrong and how suddenly it had come up, he made it into a bigger deal than it had to be, and somehow there were people on the administrative end who listened and understood and they didn't sweat it half as hard as he did.

The tuition he'd paid was frozen as a credit.

His practicum placement, the final component of his program, was informed of the change and agreed to take him during the next cycle.

Lovino would have to take the courses again starting in May and going through the summer, but he wouldn't have to pay again, and his seat would be preserved.

"Did you do your homework?"

"No…"

He couldn't muster up the courage to be mad about it.

"Why not? How much is there?"

"An essay, I think?"

"You _think?"_

Because he swore to God if Feliciano blew his fucking GPA over this he'd wring the little bastard's neck. And he fucking _meant_ _it!_

"It's AP English, I can graduate with just regular-"

"I don't give a shit about you _graduating,_ I care about your fucking scholarships!"

January through March of that year only saw Lovino in one of three places: at home where he made sure the fridge was stocked and bills paid up and _homework fucking done_, at the restaurant that still had him as a dish slave and prep-grunt so there was an extra fifty or a hundred dollars to go towards emergencies, and the hospital.

At the hospital, usually with food.

Food Papa wouldn't eat, but maybe he could convince Nonna to try a few bites.

Food he made in large portions and then brought in containers for his brothers when they did the rest of their homework.

Meals broken down into simpler ingredients, milder flavours, and lighter compositions so that maybe, just maybe, the sick man withering away on the bed would be able to fool his family. Maybe they would believe that he really was going to hang on a little bit longer between morphine drips and lapses in memory.

"Finish… school…"

"I will."

"_Finish… school…_"

"Papa, I promise…"

"_She won't… won't for… give…"_ His mother's ghost wouldn't forgive Lovino if he fucked up the rest of his life that badly. He understood the warning, and he made the promise, and he kissed the pale and clammy wrinkles on his father's brow to seal the vow. Lovino ended up making a lot of little vows like that over the final few days.

He was at work when the cancer finally took away the only parent his brothers had left.

Lovino just sat in his car and screamed because he hadn't fucking been there when his family needed him most.

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**There was supposed to be pairings and romancing in this chapter but then it just turned into awkward Belle and dead parents why this.**

**Review?**


	3. Defender of Dick-All (NethRomaBel?)

**True Love, Hall of Fame, Beam Me Up, Blow Me One Last Kiss, Lonely Girl.**

**Pretty sure I said three chapters, but here I am getting caught up in the wrong part of the nit-wit's life.**

**I swear to god there are pairings in this story, there really are, I just keep getting side-tracked, and these chapter titles are very vulgar.**

* * *

_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

Defender of Dick-All

The phrase Lovino wound up applying to school more than any other was "one more time". He'd made a bunch of emotional promises to a man on his death-bed, and once the black clothes were put away and the last of the funeral bills were dealt with, it was time for Lovino to start fulfilling them.

He had the same five instructors at the college, a completely new set of classmates, and because they had to keep things fresh and make sure they weren't mass producing the exact same cookie-cutter set of skills, Lovino found himself with a new set of books, a new set of recipes, and even more god-damned ingredients to get used to.

Some of this was good, like the introduction to several Morocan spices that Lovino had never heard of, but immediately found that he liked.

But others…

"Now everybody try a taste of this. What do you think?" Like traditional German cuisine, for one. "Lovino?"

"Uuh, ask someone else…" which all tasted like cream and dirt to him, and he couldn't understand why every single fucking dish he had to prepare for that entire unit involved an unhealthy obsession with the potato.

Like…

He just did not like them.

Potato pancakes, potato casseroles, potato soups.

Dirt, mush, yuck, ew.

Chilled potatoes, fried, baked, steamed, grated.

If he had more than a mouthful in a sitting his entire pallet felt grainy and covered in potato-skins. He hated the taste, and it didn't matter what anyone dressed them in, he couldn't eat it.

"C'mon, give them a try." Especially not _mashed_ potatoes, because those were just everything bad put in a blender and reduced to _mush…_

"Yao you covered them in barbeque sauce." But did his classmates care? Did Yao-Stupid-Wang care?

"Special Chinese barbeque sauce, now give it a taste."

Considering he actually carried a spatula of gross and proceeded to chase Lovino around _the god-damned kitchen with it,_ no.

"Are you fucking psychotic!?"

In the end it was a waste of good ginger glaze and shitty potatoes, but after Lovino and the snickering older student finished giving the kitchen a good scrub from top to bottom as punishment, they hit it off.

"How'd you end up taking this course twice?" Enough so that when the black-eyed under-cook from a small fast-food spot Lovino'd never heard of asked the question, Lovino shrugged and answered. He just finished scrubbing a spot of grease off a stubborn countertop first.

"Family issues. It's settled now though."

"Sorry to hear that."

Yao didn't push what 'family issues' was supposed to mean. In fact, if Lovino didn't consciously provide more details or interest about a subject he'd usually drop it. Yao was about his height, just a shy inch shorter, but with the kind of drill-sergeant attitude that made him seem a lot bigger and louder than he really was.

They worked together on a couple of co-op projects because Yao had the steady hand and artistic eye that went with plating and fancy decorating, while Lovino had the speed and dexterity with his knife-work so he only ever measured twice and cut once.

"You're not afraid of those big knives, are you?" Throw in the fact that they saw each other almost every day, and they were either going to become good friends or mortal enemies.

"I'm trying to be a chef, why would I be?" The fact that after Yao decided to introduce Lovino to (illegal) social drinking also helped them buddy-up.

"No reason, you just seem really young." Whereas Yao seemed really old, and Lovino said it just like that as he finished the can of tasted-like-shit beer from the six pack his friend had bought and stashed in the back of his car. At twenty Lovino knew he was too young to go into a bar and drink legally, but the chances of them getting caught and ID'd on a hot summer night in the park adjacent to their campus were slim to none.

"How'd you end up here?"

"Bad divorce." Yao was somewhere in his thirties, although he was damned good at hiding it both with his smooth round face and ability to crack a smile and act like a clown on a dime. He'd started sporting a thin black moustache and go-tee since the program's start, and that did a fair bit to age him, but it still wasn't enough. "She's got the kids, and in the middle of it I kind of snapped at work."

"Snapped?"

"Let's just say they gave me stress-leave and then told me not to bother coming back." The way Yao tipped his head back and swallowed several mouthfuls of beer told Lovino to change the subject. He was pretty sure Yao would keep answering if he kept asking, but it wasn't worth it to stress an easy evening. "But what about on your end? How come you've always got that cute blonde at arm's length?" Cute blonde..? "We saw her this morning, at the coffee shop?" Oh!

Belle…

"We're just friends." Lovino answered, and he looked around for the cardboard box holding the remaining cans. Yao nudged it over with his foot where he was sitting on top of the picnic table they'd claimed, Lovino on the actual seat part of it with the case between them.

"How come? She's cute- illegal from where I'm standing, but cute."

"Because we're just friends? I was close with her brother in high school, that's all." But Yao was quick to point out that Belle still, almost religiously, showed up at the café there on campus every Saturday morning when the cuisine program had their practical labs in the adjacent building. "Shut up, man."

"Not your type?" No, definitely not his type, and Lovino chased the comment with bitter alcohol. "Alright, describe her to me."

"Describe Belle?"

"Your type you twit." Oh… Uuh… well…

"T… Tall, I guess." He tried drinking more, and as he swallowed he decided that more alcohol wasn't going to help him, but it was a little late and he ended up looking guiltily down at the half-empty can when he was done. Lovino was wracking his brain for traits that wouldn't make this moment painfully awkward, but they weren't coming.

Someone a little taller than him, but not too tall.

"Short hair." But not too short, no buzz-cuts.

"Nice features." His inexperience was bleeding through, he didn't know what kind of lips, and he had to seriously wonder if the shape of the chin or brow would really matter that much to him. Someone he could actually bump into and not have to worry about knocking over like when he was around girls, someone he could raise his voice at without them getting scared or crying because he was a jerk and he was always going to be a jerk.

"Someone I can be comfortable around…" Because fuck him, that alone was one of the hardest needs to fulfill…

"Mm, next time I'll bring something stronger." Yao's comment didn't make any sense until he watched his friend pick up the now-empty cardboard box and tip it upside down, showing that the quarter-can of beer still in Lovino's hand was the last of the drink. "Because that's probably the lamest list I've heard in a long time."

Yeah well… fuck you…

But at least he had a friend now, and that felt like something he'd been going without for a while. Friends were hard to keep when you had school, work and family to take care of, so although it took some adjusting too, Lovino kind of liked being called up on weeknights and asked if he was free on x-day for y-event. It was nice to chum around and just talk about something everybody involved could enjoy, especially where in-jokes were involved.

Like when a loud discussion about wine on a break between classes led to under-aged Lovino remarking on the Italian vintages his grandparents had _obviously_ never let him try. Their pastry-instructor Tino just covered his ears and told them all to speak more softly so no one would get in trouble, and that somehow turned into a thing whenever alcohol and the youngest member of their class were mentioned in the same sentence.

On the home-front though, it was a little bit weird when Lovino heard a question Yao had asked him come more or less the same way out of Feliciano's mouth.

"Are you and Belle together?" Say _what?_

"Um, no?" and it brought the same queasy kind of tremble back into his gut when he looked up from the couch where he'd been reading and saw his little brother standing there fidgeting. Feliciano's brown eyes were busy examining the rug between the couch and the TV, his hands stuffed down his jean pockets and shoulders sort of bunched up under his shirt.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes I'm sure, now spit it out: what's wrong?"

It took three days of harassment to get his brother to answer the stupid question, but when Feliciano finally knuckled the reason kind of made sense.

"I asked her to homecoming and she said no, okay?" But only kind of. "You don't get it: we have lunch almost every day together and we help each other with homework, we've been in two of the same classes all year, but when I asked she said no." It was hard to keep Feliciano's grade straight sometimes when half his classes were a level above his actual age. He might not have been graduating this summer, but a lot of his friends were.

"Okay now I get it, but where do I come in?" Lovino just wanted to get to the bottom of this, because he really couldn't stand having his little brother refuse to make eye-contact with him. Feliciano wasn't doing it because he was mad at him, but he was still doing it, and it almost scared him.

"Because she said she was waiting for you to ask instead."

_BZZZT._

Wrong answer!

Fuck this shit he was going to deal with it god-damn it.

And he wasn't going to fucking trash his brother in the process by screaming "go with him to prom!" either.

Lovino just fumed and bullied his way through the next two weeks of his program until the prom-season had come and gone again at the high school level. Feliciano handled the rejection his own way and still wound up attending at a table of his other friends, because he was one of them and their grandparents were fine with him going out late for one night.

The Saturday after prom, Lovino was loitering outside the café waiting for Belle, who he knew would be upset, but somehow he wasn't surprised when instead of Belle someone else came in her place.

Lars had always been a bit taller than Lovino. His hair was blonde, but it was a much lighter tone than his sister's. He was big too: in high school he'd been a little chubby, sort of heavy, the kind of body that if you were crushing on him it made you want to put your arms around him and squeeze. Whatever he was doing in university had effectively slapped the baby-fat out of his round face and tightened up his torso, the state crest stamped on his thicker shoulders and showing off just how muscular he'd become.

Lovino'd convinced himself after a year apart that his crush had faded and died, but seeing him again in the summer light filled him with two very different emotions.

_Fuck, he's gorgeous…_

And:

_I forgot to tell Nonna I love her._

Lars was pissed, Lars was furious, Lars was in full on defensive big-brother-bear mode. Lovino suddenly wished that there were more students around during the summer semester so someone might actually witness the murder about to take place.

"Lars…" But Lovino still tried. "It's nice to see-"

"_Explain._" Lars had never been a really chatty guy, but his voice had deepened and grown a hell of a lot louder behind his clenched teeth. There wasn't going to be any small-talk or catching up then- "You have ten seconds starting right _now_."

"Christ! What's wrong with you?" Lovino was gonna die, gonna die, gonna die- "Lars we have coffee. It's not a god-damned proposal if I buy it for her!" He'd had a plan coming into this, but what good was a plan when staring death in the face?

"Then _stop_ leading her on!"

"I'm not!"

"_Bullshit!"_ Okay no, how about this? Lovino had a fucking big-brother-revenge-button too.

"No, the bullshit is your sister acting like my brother isn't worth her time!"

"Well he isn't!"

Oh-

_Oh Lars had not just said that…_

But he did, and he said it to Lovino's face too.

"Lovino your face!"

Which Lars then proceeded to beat into his skull.

"Shit, are you okay?"

And it kind of really hurt, and having his classmates fuss over it an hour later just kind of made the splitting pains even worse.

"Personal space, gu-_aaaaah…!_"

"Vargas, do you need to go home?"

No, Lovino did not need to go home because he'd had the crap kicked out of him. But by the end of a two hour mock-service to wrap up their Central-American unit, he was ready to just pass out behind the deep-fryer. Thankfully, after the kitchen was cleaned and most of the students had left, Yao was there like a good friend to prod Lovino with his car-keys trying to get the story out of him.

"I'll drive you home, now just get up."

"I'll walk. I'm fine." Lars hadn't hurt his legs, just bruised his ribs and done a serious number on his shoulders and face. It hadn't been a completely one-sided fight, but Lovino had lost by a landslide and the black eye he'd given Lars didn't make up for the throbbing in his own jaw.

"Lovino someone kicked the shit out of you, now say why."

"Family issues, friend issues: drop it."

That wasn't the best way to put it. It made it sound like someone in _his_ family was responsible, and Lovino huffed into his arms where they were down on the counter, a stool keeping his sore body upright.

"Belle's brother and I got pissed and kicked the shit out of each other: he kicked harder."

"Why?"

"Why'd your wife leave you?" It was mean but he hissed the question up at his friend, because he knew it would draw a clear line between what they could talk about, and what Yao needed to stop asking. "I don't wanna fucking talk about it." It kind of hurt when he looked up and, instead of putting on a sorry face, Yao was just giving him a stony-eyed stare.

"My wife never came at me with a two-by-four either." For fuck's sake, _Yao…!_

"I'm gay now leave me the fuck alone." He put his head back down and he hated the way those words sounded. He wanted them back in his mouth so he could chew them up and swallow. It hadn't been a fucking hate-crime, it had been Lovino being a fucking idiot and letting himself stab a giant Dutch bear in the eye with his temper.

He heard Yao walk away though, which was an odd feeling because he didn't expect it. He expected some kind of awkward fumble, or maybe a jump on the hate-crime band-wagon, or just something else. Something that wasn't turning around and walking away...

But then he heard the footsteps come back, and he heard a heavy thunk on the counter before the clack of two glass tumblers made him pick his head up. Lovino recognized the bottle of bourbon because they cooked with it sometimes, it was from the kitchen's pantry, and there was already a bit of ice each glass as Yao twisted the cap off and poured a small amount into both.

Then he walked away again, and this time he came back with a second stool which he pulled up and then sat on.

Yao picked up his glass and Lovino very slowly reached for the other one, sniffing the thick, semi-sweet liquor before his friend reached out and knocked the two glasses together.

"Talk."

So Lovino made himself speak. It was only after Yao was satisfied with the story and the stupidity of it all that he drove Lovino home as promised.

"Nonna wai-!"

Which meant as soon as he showed his swollen, slightly purple face to his family, it was like walking into that kitchen all over again. The difference this time was the violent Italian screaming and shrieking through the house as his Nonna vowed to do at least eight things that couldn't be reproduced in print.

"Rina!" Which meant Nonno had to step in and stop her before Carlino looked any more horrified by what he'd just heard come out of his sweet grandmother's mouth. "He's a man! He's fine!"

"HE IS NOT FINE LOOK WHAT THEY DID TO HIM."

Nonna needed a bit of time and a lot of forced affection before they calmed her down enough to just sit next to Lovino and confirm that yes, he was okay, and yes, he was still in a bit of pain but he was going to be alright. If smiling hadn't hurt so much he probably would have done more of that to sooth her, but ultimately he had to come up with one of his favourite meals and let her vanish into her kitchen and work on that instead.

She still smashed a plate on the floor and screamed a new profanity for the neighbours to hear, but it did calm her down…

Nonno really just wanted to know that it had been a fair fight, which it had been, and once he pieced together that, sadly, Lovino had lost, he just needed to know that his grandson had still put up a decent fight before warning him from being so stupid in the future.

"If you're going to fight, at least _win,_ you know?" Yes, Nonno.

"Your face is a weird shape, Vino." The comment came from all the swelling around his jaw.

"That's temporary: yours is permanent." But at thirteen Carlino was allowed to touch the furious purple welts next to his eye, and when he asked how much it hurt Lovino lied and said it felt like fire and glass so his brother wouldn't get it in his head that he wanted to try fighting too.

Feliciano was oddly quiet for the entire evening, worried yes, and helpful with the dishes and cleaning the kitchen so Lovino didn't have to after dinner, but not nearly as chatty as he should have been.

"Was today my fault?" After Lovino had a chance to shower and put more ice on his swollen face, Feliciano was hovering at his bedroom door. He wasn't sure if his brother saw the ugly marks on his ribs before he got his shirt down properly over them, but he just grabbed the ice-pack again and put it on his jaw before answering.

"Nope. Why would you think that?" Slowly dropping himself onto his bed, Lovino put the question as casually as he could and he didn't really lie either. It hadn't happened because of Feliciano, it had happened because of Lars' fucking comment and Lovino's shitty temper.

"…Because Belle said her brother came home with a black eye and a limp today." He was limping? Good, the fucker deserved it.

"Maybe he fell off his bike?" But that wasn't going to make him admit it.

"Lovino."

"What?"

He answered his name quickly and watched the way Feliciano tried getting up a glare before giving up and staring back down at the floor. He really had to stop doing that. He really, really had to stop acting like he couldn't meet Lovino's eyes anymore…

"I'm sorry…" And then he mumbled an apology of all things, which Lovino just didn't understand. "I know I already cause you a lot of trouble, and I just don't-"

"What trouble?" On the one hand he didn't want to interrupt, but on the other he wanted to shut down that train of thought. When his brother just bit his lips and kept his eyes down Lovino'd had about enough of it. "Feli get in here, close the door."

Feliciano did what he said before coming and sitting down next to Lovino on the bed. At twenty and eighteen they didn't really hug anymore. If they were happy, sure, if Feliciano was tired and leaned on him, okay, but the time felt like it had passed where if one was upset the other would just grab him in a hug and make it better. It was a little bit sad to realize something like that…

"I don't…" but that didn't stop him from just trying to listen while his brother put his words together. It took Feliciano a few tries, which was strange for him because usually he couldn't keep things bottled up at all, but finally he found the words and the means to look up again. "I don't want to get in your way."

His way…?

It really wasn't what Lovino expected to hear, maybe not even what he wanted to because it was something he couldn't answer. But the words were quiet and the red lines around Feliciano's eyes made them sound sincere. They were eighteen and twenty years old, but Lovino decided that he didn't really care about that right now. He was happier putting one arm around his stupid brother's neck and pulling him close for something between a hug and a choke-hold, smiling a little against the brat's hair while Feliciano didn't even bother putting up a fight to get free.

"When you figure out what direction I'm heading in, little brother, be sure to let me know."

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***puts head on the floor and doesn't move***

**I don't know where the fight came from I really don't. Apparently I ship Romabel a little more than I thought, so when I finish this maybe I'll write a Gauken for them or something.**

**Really though if Lars and Lovino got into a fight South Italy would die and no one can convince me otherwise.**


	4. A Jobless Sponge

**Dizzy, Glitter in the Air, Beam Me Up, Try.**

**Hello!**

**Update!**

**Here you go!**

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_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

A Jobless Sponge

It took until the end of Lovino's time at college before he finally understood what his brother meant by _'not getting in his way'_.

But before that the most important thing was that he when he left college, he did it with a piece of paper for his grandparents to put on their wall and a skill-set that he honestly considered worth more than gold. The fact that they didn't let him get away with skipping the ceremony this time didn't even bother him that much. Stupid robe, stupid hat, stupid stage that was actually fucking terrifying to walk across when his name was called- he hadn't known the campus had a legitimate auditorium and stage, but they did and he was sweating bullets telling himself not to trip or do something stupid.

College was the longest and shortest year of his life, but Lovino hadn't known if he was supposed to be getting ready to burst out of the gates at a run, or slam on the breaks when he received his graduation gift.

"I can't go."

"See? He said he's not going."

"_Rina._"

Because although he tried slowing things down at their dinner table with his family sitting around him, Lovino could see the road in front of him getting steeper by the minute.

His gift wasn't another set of knives or a white chef's jacket. It was an offer Lovino couldn't accept, from a great-uncle he'd never met, in a country he'd never been too.

"Why not?" But somehow everyone around him was taking this as a good idea, because Feliciano's voice was more than just curious, it was pushy.

"I don't have a passport, for one." Lovino's first excuse fell flat as soon as it left his tongue. He didn't know how he knew his grandfather had out-maneuvered him, but he didn't even need to see the thin bundle of papers before he felt Carlino rudely manipulating his fingers around a pen.

"You're in luck, here's a passport application." Nonno wasn't going to take _'no' _for an answer with this, but as the government form was placed in front of him Lovino struggled for another reason.

"I don't even _speak_ Italian- not enough to work there!" They could all fend for themselves in the language, their grandparents had made sure of that, but just because Lovino could describe a day at school didn't mean he could actually function in another country.

"You speak food, that's practically the same thing…" Nonna was the absolute only person at the table who was even half-way on his side, but even with a tight-lipped expression on her narrow face, she was still against him. "You'll pick it up just like your Nonno and I learned English."

"And your cousins will help you. _Sign._"

"I don't even _need_ to go! I can get a half-decent wage now, so-"

"Your father earned a half-decent wage until he got married." Nonna shot Lovino's argument down in a ball of flaming guilt. "Then he had a wife, a car, three boys to feed and a house to pay for." But it felt like Lovino was only getting a third of it, because Carlino felt stiff on the chair next to him, and Feliciano was staring at the table like he wanted to crawl under it. "He earned a half-decent wage until he needed to make a good salary, and then he spent the rest of his life travelling back and forth missing every important-…"

Nonno didn't stop her from talking, Nonna just let her voice go quiet and balled one fist up in front of her mouth. The five of them sat there in a steady silence for several long moments, everything she wasn't saying filtering through Lovino's thoughts very slowly. He didn't expect Carlino to nudge him in the side, but his little brother had to do it twice before he looked at him.

"You should go." It wasn't _hard_ to take advice from a thirteen year old, it was just very strange. "It'd be fun, and maybe we can visit you!"

"I can take your job at the restaurant." Feliciano chanced a look up, dropped his eyes, then tried again when he seemed to get that Lovino didn't want to speak. "Money won't be a problem, and we have the rest of Papa's insurance money too if we need it."

"That's your university money." Lovino said the words very quietly because he was trying to sort out how to feel. The only thing he knew for certain was to say university, not college, because he'd already trained himself not to make that kind of slip: his brother was not going to some dinky little community college after high school.

"Yes, but-" No, no buts, no maybes, no what ifs. That money wasn't for plane tickets or passport applications or stupid things like that, it was for- "Lovino, this is your _career!_"

Feliciano never shouted. Lovino would scream on a dime but the middle brother hated raising his voice. Everyone, Lovino included, jumped when Feliciano stood up from his seat and shouted the words across the table at him. The sound actually _scared_ Carlino so when he jumped he grabbed Lovino's arm.

"Feli-"

"_Don't blow this!"_ His face was solid red and Lovino didn't know if he was furious or embarrassed, he just listened. "_Yes_, I will go to university! _Yes,_ you're the reason why! _Yes_, Carlino will go too! Now stop worrying about us and for once will you just worry about _yourself!?" _Lovino's ears were ringing, there was no way he'd heard any of that properly.

And for a good ten seconds he mis-read Carlino's sudden hug around his neck as _'I'm scared'_ instead of _'stop being an idiot and go'_.

"Okay." He'd do it then, but not without crushing the idiot kid trying to choke him first. "If it means that much to you people, then fine." He… He'd do it.

Because of the passport and Visa applications, Lovino's departure was delayed by another three months. Despite the cost of the plane ticket, he lost the argument with his grandparents to postpone his departure until after Christmas. It took two painful months of packing to put all the useless shit he'd accumulated in seven years into boxes for shipping or storage, and by the end of it he spent his last night at home silently freaking out in a completely bare, empty bedroom.

So fuck that, he took his pillow and blankets and slept on his brothers' floor instead. When Feliciano tripped over him at two in the morning on his way to the bathroom, Lovino took a minute to recognize the whisper of more blankets and the light plop of another pillow hitting the floor next to him. By the time he woke up in the morning, Carlino'd slunk down next to them and was sleeping half up on his back.

"You're heavy. Get off."

Foolish words, because that just prompted both of his brothers to completely smother him in blankets and bodies.

"_I SAID GET OFF OF ME YOU LITTLE SHITS."_

But somewhere between the grappling and swearing, there was a three-way hug and tears wiped off on bed-sheets and pillows.

At least getting up was fun, because breakfast just hurt on every level. Nonna did a good job of acting like nothing important was happening today, but when Lovino asked if she wanted help in the kitchen or not, the conflict bubbled up and she refused to speak again until he'd hugged and held her and the eggs started burning.

"My nephew will be there at the airport to pick you up in Rome." Nonno had arranged with his brother's family in Italy to put Lovino up for a month, maybe two, and help him find both a job and an apartment somewhere in the city. He'd never met them before, but during the long drive to the air-port Nonno filled the stifling silence with details Lovino had already heard over and over again.

In the end he flew from Chicago, made a brief stop-over in New York, then flew to London and changed to a smaller plane which carried him across the continent to Rome.

When he finally got off the plane and met the father-and-son duo there to pick him up, Lovino botched a simple-as-fuck greeting in Italian, swore twice in English and then just sat the fuck down on the terminal floor wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into. Was it too late to turn around and go home?

"You're just tired, a good effort though!" The men were his grandfather's brother Giorgio and his nephew Marcello, so that made them Lovino's Great-Uncle and Second-Cousin. Marcello was a thin man with stooped shoulders and a large nose which dominated his narrow face, but he was friendly, and forgiving, and he took the heavy bags from Lovino and helped carry them out to the car. Giorgio was Grandpa's younger brother, but he wasn't built the same way: he looked older with his crooked spine and thin white hair, a cane keeping him upright as he made quiet conversation about Lovino's flight and everyone's health back home.

The car-ride wasn't as long as what Lovino was used to, especially since one of them said it would be a long drive home. In fact it was a very small ride. Tiny. Narrow. _Winding. _Lovino had been convinced that he'd drive around Italy as much as he'd driven back home, but even jet-lagged and assaulted by the bright sun coming through the car windows, he took one look at the ridiculously small lanes winding through Rome and decided he'd rather invest in a bicycle.

But the ride was thirty minutes at most, no more, and along the way his relatives dropped name after name after name in an effort to list the entire family tree. He had absolutely no idea where he was by the time they finally stopped on a hill bricked with tall stone houses that blocked the bright sunlight. He understood why his grandfather had been so picky about what luggage to buy when he saw the narrow doorway, and the tiny corridor and what he assumed was the twisted stairwell to get to the upper floors of the town-house. When he got home Lovino vowed to never complain about the size of American town houses again.

"He's here!" but a silly little promise like that wasn't enough to distract him from the _mob_ of people waiting in the larger-than-expected living and dining room on the house's first floor. While the dimensions were small, the actual footprint of the house was large enough that there were at least fifteen people comfortably seated inside, the smell of food cooking and sitting out in a welcoming spread over a table that put his Nonna's to shame.

There were lots of people- maybe even too many people. Lovino wasn't afraid of a gathering or large crowd, but his senses were drowned in loud, noisy Italian, and he'd learned on the ride from New York to London that he couldn't sleep on air planes.

He was kissed, smooched, hugged, knocked around, patted on the back, had his cheeks pinched and hands shaken, and when he wasn't looking he nearly shrieked and jumped out of his skin when he felt a hand invade his shirt and pinch his stomach.

"_Rina doesn't feed him enough!"_

Back off, _back off, BACK OFF PSEUDO-NONNA._

"_He's too skinny to be a cook!"_

Shut up he was not!

"_He's very American."_ Lovino didn't even know what that was supposed to mean- "_Do you think he even speaks Italian?"_

Apparently he understood more than he'd given himself credit for, because if he heard one more old woman titter behind her hands and say a female name he was going to burst through the wall and find somewhere to fucking _hide._

By the time the aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins and friends had all been introduced in a blur, then eaten in a steel-drum of dishes and noise, and then said good bye in twos and threes as the daylight faded, Lovino was ready to fall over. His Italian had not improved over four hours of constant backwards attempts to speak, but at least he'd been able to translate a portion of what was said around and to him.

"And here, this will be your room while you stay with us." It was creeping up on eleven at night by the time Marcello noticed him staring half-dead into the glass of wine someone had decided he needed. He was taken away from the remaining guests and led upstairs to a small room that mimicked his old bedroom in size, but all Lovino cared about was the fact that the bed had a blanket and a pillow.

Showering could wait for morning.

Lovino passed out for a solid twelve hours and then found himself terrified to leave the room after he woke up: what if the guests were still downstairs?

Stupid thought.

But what if they _were?_

Food was what got him to finally creep down the narrow wooden staircase and check. Food, because even if he had even the slightest chance of communicating intelligently with another human being in this country, that would be the subject.

Food came before shaving and showering and all that stupid junk. Lovino sort of recognized the woman cooking as someone in Marcello's immediate family: it wasn't his wife, but Lovino couldn't remember if he had a daughter or not.

"Good morning?" But after his repeated fuck-ups with Italian yesterday, he was a bit unsteady trying to use the language today.

"Ah, there you are!" She was about his age, dark brown, almost black hair. She had green eyes and a healthy bronze tan, and she threw something else on the end of the greeting that he assumed meant _'sleepy-head'_. "Did you sleep well?"

"Very, thanks. What are you making?" It smelled good, but his senses weren't working very well at the moment.

"If you can remember my name, I'll give you some." _Fuuuuck…_

Chiara Vargas was his _something-th_-cousin, a university student like what Feliciano would be next year, and because of her light class schedule she was also his primary means of transportation around Rome.

"Papa said to ask if you wanted to do some sight-seeing today after you wake up a bit."

"I thought I was supposed to be looking for a job?"

"What, are you saying Rome isn't worth your time?"

She also very quickly turned into his Italian teacher, sparring partner, and favourite cousin over-all.

"God, you're cranky!"

"Well at least I have a job!"

The work-visa with his passport had been a bitch to get, but that was how he got his bank account, his cell-phone, and the right to actually go into small restaurants where word-of-mouth said they needed help and try to sell himself.

Somehow, doing it in Italian was easier than if he'd had to muddle through in English. When your vocabulary was limited, you said what you fucking needed to say and didn't dick around with super-politeness.

"I will work. I need to work. I want to learn: teach me!"

His attempts were by-and-large unsuccessful in the area immediately around his cousin's house, but he kept trying, moving further and further out of the neighbourhood, then the district, until he was taking transit on the days he couldn't bother Chiara for a ride out to smaller and smaller locations.

Being a dish-washer for four years back in America wasn't much of a resume, and having to repeat culinary school was likewise unimpressive. He didn't blame the assholes for not even giving him a chance, but the first little bistro that did was the one that hired him.

"Make an omelette."

"What kind would you like?"

"One that isn't terrible."

It was a simple pass-fail test, and Lovino passed. He'd brought his own knives with him to every place he'd applied, dressed sharp and with an apron from home with only enough stains on it to show he actually fucking cooked in it, not purposefully splashed himself with his creations. Omelettes weren't hard, they were fussy: you had to know _how _to make an omelette.

And you had to know how to make one with roasted bell-peppers, onions and just enough garlic, salt and pepper before serving it in a timely manner. He almost fucked it up twice by being a little more ambitious than a simple cheese and onion serving would have been, but again: it got him the job.

He was given a place on the bottom rung of the restaurant ladder. He was a dish-washer all over again, but he came early like he was told and peeled, chopped and prepped his way into learning the kitchen like the back of his hand. He knew where every knife, pot and pan was supposed to go, he knew how the order system worked and was in charge of maintaining the sanitizer in the back where the plates and cutlery were seared with hot steam and soap before being ready for service. It didn't piss him off to be at the bottom, because unlike when he'd been back home: here there was the promise of moving up.

But the routine was hard. Get there at ten and prep for two hours, work the dish-washer and sink for four hours during lunch service, prep again for an hour before dinner, and work the line for exactly one hour at night doing specific tasks dictated and often changed by the head-chef on a whim. Maybe he was sautéing vegetables, maybe he was garnishing plates, maybe he was dressing salads: really, he was doing whatever another pair of hands wasn't already all over.

"Loosen your wrist, not like that." The head-chef's favourite way of telling him he was fucking up was to smack Lovino's wrist with the flat of his knife, which was intimidating as hell but he never nicked him once. "Let the sauce run off the spoon: you're not controlling it, you're helping it."

That pristine sixty minutes was the whole reason he put up with the other nine hours of shit on his plate. Dinner service was three hours, he cooked for one of them, and that was enough to sustain him for another two hours of dish-duty and then a long trek home so he could do it all again tomorrow.

His first pay-cheque was given to his relatives as a thank-you for letting him live with them. The money did a strange dance around the world before it wound up back in Lovino's bank account with a wire-transfer from his grandfather, but apparently the thought meant more than the cash.

The second pay-cheque was devoured by his rent, and for the first time in his life he found himself living completely on his own.

No grandparents.

No brothers.

No cousins.

Just Lovino alone in the morning when he showered and got dressed, and Lovino alone when he opened the door to an apartment where everything was in exactly the same place where he'd put it that morning. Just Lovino alone with nothing but a couple phone-calls a month back home to talk to his family, and a lot of chatter and fumbled Italian at work trying not to get kicked or stomped on by someone higher up the ladder.

The only break in the stressful cycle came three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And it always came in the early morning too, when Lovino was the only one there to deal with it.

His name was Antonio Hernandez Carriedo, and in as little as three short months in Italy Lovino Vargas was in love.

* * *

**OKAY SO.**

**I have at least two details I need to Ret-con in Game of Cooks, but I'm lazy and don't want to do it right now.**

**In a chapter Lovino thinks about "A car-crash and things they didn't talk about" taking their parents away. When I edit the stupid thing it will say CANCER and things they blahblahblah. This is a draft line between different AUs, because in my fic ****The Gay Brother**** I was going to use cancer, but it was a car-crash, and I forgot to change that in GoC so I wasn't doubling-up on plot devices.**

**The other one is Monica's doctor in GoC should be someone else. I was lazy and name-dropped Spain because I wasn't paying attention when I wrote it.**

**Aaaand that's all for me! Next update soon-ish!**


	5. Blushing Buffoon (Spamano)

**Who Knew?, Hall of Fame, Some Nights**

**And hi, NQSanon! It's good to hear from you again: how was Africa?**

**I hope everyone else is still enjoying this story too, I don't know why it's moving so slowly: but at least I'm writing it quickly!**

**Spamano at last!**

* * *

_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

Blushing Buffoon

The first time Lovino met Antonio, his gut reaction was:

_Shit, I bet this bastard doesn't speak any English either!_

And he was frustratingly right.

Antonio was a tall man, not towering, but lanky and thin with deceptively long limbs wrapped in sun-kissed skin. He drove a loud, beat-up looking white truck that did its job hauling produce around the city from the farm he worked for out a little further from the urban environment where Lovino lived. It was easy to hear him coming because the engine was getting ready to quit, but his boss wouldn't replace it until it died, and it was even easier to know it was him driving because the Spaniard usually stuck his head out the window and whistled or shouted at the top of his lungs for attention.

He had the sort of wide green eyes that you kind of got lost in if you looked at them too long, almost unnaturally large, but alluring instead of off-putting. His jaw was very narrow and his black hair had that permanent seventeen-year-old-just-rolled-out-of-bed look to it, the tangled locks always flopping back and forth rain or shine around his eyes and big ears.

Really, from a purely commercial point of view he was kind of funny looking.

"Ah, you're the little American, aren't you?"

"Excuse you, I'm not _little_."

"Sign here please!"

And he only ever smelled of three things: dirt, gasoline, and tomatoes.

"Hello again! I brought the extra zucchini your boss wanted this time!"

"…Do you need help carrying that?"

"Nope! Where in America are you from?"

But fuck him, there was something about that smile…

"Vino! Vino-Lovino~!"

"Oh my god, I'm here, stop singing my name like that you freak."

"Aw, but it's such a nice, Spanish-sounding name!"

His smile, and his voice, and the way those thin arms were actually wrapped up in tough, tangible layers of muscle that he started showing off as winter turned into spring. Antonio's hair got a little longer as the weather warmed up, Lovino thought he was imagining it until the day the delivery boy showed up with a red tie looped around the black strands, keeping them back off his neck as he worked heaving and hoisting boxes of produce into the back of the restaurant.

There was honestly only so long a single, healthy young human being could go being surrounded by only co-workers and family to talk to. Lovino had gone out on his own a few times around Rome, and he'd let Chiara and his other cousins drag him around to see touristy things and secret local hot-spots, but being with family meant treading the same line he'd adapted to back home.

He'd made up a lie about a girl back in America so he wouldn't have to worry so much.

That had back-fired as soon as Chiara asked, innocent as fuck, to see a picture of her. His stupid-ass bumbling answer had only convinced one of her school friends who'd been there at the time to show him what _real_ Italian women were like.

Admittedly, Romano had never kissed a woman before that.

And honestly, for all Chiara's cooing and teasing about what a cute couple they'd make, he never wanted to do it again.

He made it safely to that first Italian spring by repeatedly, quietly, mentioning that someone had maybe caught his eye whenever his extended family members pestered him, but he was mum on the details.

But it was a someone who started showing up earlier and earlier at the restaurant on delivery days, until one morning he actually beat Lovino there. By the time Lovino arrived the idiot was just sitting on the flatbed of his beat-up truck waiting for someone to let him in the back door.

"Don't you have _other_ deliveries to make?" Was all Lovino could muster up the strength for, locking up the bicycle that a few more pay-cheques had made a worthwhile investment.

"Of course, but not until later." Antonio had a way of speaking with his chin on his hand that made him seem completely put out and sad, but then he turned it right around with a smile that was too wide for his thin face. "I wanted to see when you'd show up, Lovi."

"That is such a stupid nick-name." And Lovino just had to pray that the burning in his ears could be brushed off as an effect of the up-hill segment of his bike ride. Unfortunately, as he was fumbling for the keys to unlock the back door and let them both inside so his day could begin, Antonio spoke up in that sing-song Spanish voice of his.

"You know, you're really cute when you blush."

"I'm not blushing!"

"Eh?"

It took Lovino three seconds and Antonio's stupid chuckle before he understood that he'd blurted the words out in English, but as soon as the older man started smiling again, maybe even a little differently than before, the blushing started getting worse.

He didn't want to admit it, it was stupid and a little bit creepy on his end, but Lovino knew his smile. Antonio wore it all the damn time so it wasn't hard to get used to it! The way he showed off all of his teeth and usually closed his eyes at the peak of every grin, the tiny laugh that never failed to bubble up his throat when he started, the way that laugh tapered off at the end.

So when he noticed a _different_ smile, he really meant it. His eyes didn't close all the way, the laugh was replaced by a soft _'Nnn', _and only his top lip really lifted off to show off his teeth. For a moment it felt like he was much closer than he actually was, but the fear passed and Antonio was still sitting on the back of his truck, no closer or further away than before.

"Why'd you really show up this early?" Lovino dropped the keys twice, but finally did manage to get the door open.

"I wanted to know when was the last time you went out."

Lovino almost bit back with a sharp _'why!?'_, but he swallowed the shout. He did and didn't want the answer.

"Couple weekends ago," he mumbled instead. "My cousin and her friends like going out." And where dancing and drinking were involved, the need for complete fluency fell away. His Italian was already noticeably better, but liquor was good at switching that off.

Speaking of switches, with the door propped open Lovino's hand found the light switches, flicking them on so the small kitchen in the back end of the restaurant lit up. He popped open the windows for a bit of air and some more light, making sure the path to the walk-in freezer was clear so anything Antonio needed to store in there could be carried easily.

"Are you going out with them tomorrow too?" The Spaniard was right behind him with the first box of tomatoes to replenish the supply he'd brought a week earlier. The question was a little bit terrifying, but instead of coming up with a simple lie, Lovino fumbled with the truth instead.

"No. Why?" And then that fucking question popped out of his mouth. He couldn't honestly pretend that he was more interested in the pressure gauge on the sanitizer than in hearing Antonio's answer, but oh God did he try.

"There's a new place that just opened up a few blocks from here, I thought it would be fun to check out tomorrow night." As near as Lovino could tell after weeks of sparse and strange conversation, the age gap between them wasn't very big. A few years, yes, but not enough to put them in different generations.

And even if it turned out to be Antonio, Lovino, and eight of Antonio's other friends: it still sounded like a date in his stupid brain.

"That doesn't sound too bad," And he wasn't working tomorrow or the day after either, maybe Antonio knew that? "What time?"

"I'd like to meet up here at around nine." Nine o'clock, Lovino could handle that. He just found that strange smile on his crush's lips a lot harder to deal with. "Unless you'd rather I swing by your place and pick you up of course."

"You know where I live?"

"No, but you could always tell me." That smile, and that change in pitch- not dropping it to the bottom of Antonio's range, but mellowing the scale just enough to make him sound a bit more serious, less playful. That and just the fact that he phrased the question like a suggestion, and he hadn't taken his eyes off Lovino yet where he felt utterly paralyzed next to the giant steel machine- things didn't click, they _crashed_.

'_He's flirting with me!?'_

The disbelief made him mumble the building address and his apartment number. Antonio actually shouted a phrase that meant _'It's a date!'_ in Italian before he left, and after going weak-kneed in the bathroom for several minutes wondering if he should puke or cry, Lovino realized how fucking stupid he was.

He was setting himself up for disaster.

He was so fucking easy to read that Antonio was just going to use it against him.

Look at the stupid, ignorant American foreigner who thinks guys go out with guys in Italy!

Lovino got to enjoy an entire day at work yoyo-ing between _'maybe he meant it' _and _'maybe I should buy a ticket home'_. He got hit with that stupid knife more times in sixty minutes than he usually did in a week, and that actually earned him a stern talking-to by the Head Chef before he was sent on his way at the end of the night.

"Lovino, is there some sort of emergency you need to deal with at home?"

"No sir."

"Did something happen that you need to address right away?"

Again: "No sir."

"Then don't _ever_ let yourself get so distracted like you were tonight, do you understand?"

"Yes, sir." He did understand, and it fucking sucked to get a lecture- not because it was embarrassing, but because he deserved it after the mistakes he'd made.

"You are not a bad cook." Praise, it was important to note, was not something Lovino ever got a lot of at this job. It had nothing to do with his abilities either: his boss just didn't like handing out encouragements. Hearing the words _'not bad'_ leave the Head Chef's mouth was more than he usually got about anything. "I think that you could be a great chef, but you need to apply yourself more. Family emergencies, fine, yes, those are important, but unless something terrible is about to happen outside then I need your head in this kitchen and nowhere else, is that clear?"

It was clear.

And it honestly wasn't unreasonable either. He hadn't come all the way from Chicago to Rome just to flip out and slack off because he was walking into a Spanish trap. If he humiliated himself tomorrow then it was his own damn fault.

"Enjoy your weekend, come back and do _better_, si?"

That… Yes. That was exactly what he was going to do: get through this and then do better.

That was why he spent the whole day before he was supposed to go out practicing with his knives. Supposedly he got his fill of slicing, dicing, chopping, mincing and julienning at work, but he made himself do it anyways. He minced shallots into a bowl and left them with a bottle of wine to reduce into a thick sauce with several spices. He peeled grapes because peeling grapes was a bitch and he hated it, keeping an egg-timer on hand and pressuring himself to fucking do a cleaner job in less time.

He shouldn't have bought a small rack of lamb, but he did, and he cleaned that fucking thing trying to figure out what technique worked best for him: scraping the bones with a blade, or wrapping a piece of twine around them and pulling?

He wound up with a mutilated rack of lamb, but at least he figured out that the string method was a waste of fucking time and patience.

Instead of grinding the herbs for a spice-rub, he chopped those stupid things too, trying to slice mint and parsley as thin as he possibly could with knives he sharpened to surgical edges.

Precise cuts and bites from the knives and a bowl of ice water helped him produce blooms from carrot and celery stalks, an artsy form of cooking that he wasn't fond of, but with the lamb in the oven and his sauce and pasta almost done, he didn't want another god-damned pot to wash in his own cramped kitchen.

So that was all he did. All day. He practiced and he cooked and at seven thirty he sat down to more food than he could possibly eat on his own, but he made a dent in it. Between bites he scribbled out what spices didn't work in what components of the dish, marking down changes or things his pallet did agree with in a little notebook he'd started using after finding his job.

_Then_ he got ready for his "date".

And if it sucked he'd come home and stuff his face with more lamb and pasta and fucking cry or something before crawling into bed.

And if it didn't suck- well, he wasn't going to let his mind wander that way. He just showered and shaved and took longer than he should have getting ready. Money wasn't so tight for him anymore- he was single and living alone, his rent wasn't horrible and aside from his food budget, he was doing alright for himself. He only had one good jacket, but the summer heat wasn't too hot and he threw the black material on over a simple white shirt. No tie, no accessories, and he almost took another shower when he put a dab of cologne on his neck and then panicked about the decision.

At twenty-one he'd never been on a date before.

He had no fucking idea what he was doing, but at nine o'clock he was standing outside his building with his arms folded, trying to look pissed as fuck in the creeping dark. At five past the hour he seriously considered running back up to his door and hiding under his bed, but at quarter past he was legitimately torn between feeling hurt and being pissed off.

Pissed off was winning the battle by the time a headlight and the drone of a Vespa motor caught his attention in the twilight. There was no trying necessary when he sent a livid glare at the moron who cut the engine on the silver machine and jumped off before even taking his helmet off.

"I'm sorry!" If Antonio'd had the balls to fucking _smile_ at him, Lovino would have seriously considered punching him. "I got turned around at the street light! This is a really sketchy neighbourhood, isn't it?"

"So first you're late and then you insult where I live." The one time Lovino _should _have had his meat cleaver with him, it was sitting upstairs in its case. "This club had better be worth it, I swear to God."

"Well, it's my kind of place." Lovino hadn't even commented on the fact that the machine in front of him didn't look built to carry two people, so Antonio's smart-ass reaction to his complaints wasn't appreciated. "I think you'll like it, but if I'm wrong I'm sure we'll have a good laugh about it the next time I drive by with a delivery!"

The smile, dashing as it was, was not helping things right now. Lovino just wanted to change the subject and get this over-with. He could hear his self-pity dinner calling to him from his fridge.

"Don't tell me you expect us both to ride that thing."

"Why not? I brought a second helmet!" Small comfort that, especially when Lovino noticed the next flaw in Antonio's plan. The other man was too busy trying to unhook the second helmet from the side of the machine, displaying the crest on the back of his own red and yellow one that confirmed how it was in fact a mock-up of the Spanish flag. Where Lovino expected the Italian tricolour to make an appearance, he was surprised to see a simple white American star on a red circle, the rest of it coloured in blue.

"Okay," Fine, that didn't look awful. "But where the fuck are the handlebars?" The driver's set was obvious because they were at the top of the damned steering column, but as he chanced a few steps closer, arms still crossed tight over his chest and wrinkling his shirt, Lovino couldn't see the second set meant for an unwitting passenger.

"Oh, there aren't any. But look! A helmet!" Jesus fucking Christ, Antonio.

"What the hell am I supposed to hold onto then? I'm not getting on that thing!"

"Me?"

Antonio snuck the word in right after Lovino's question and at the same time he made his declaration. It took him until the end of his own snap before he actually heard the suggestion wheedle through the quiet night and stab him in the ear, and as soon as that happened his mouth decided to stop working and his brain checked out in favour of a nauseating dial-tone of fear.

He told himself three times that he had not just heard what he'd just heard.

But Antonio was straddling the Vespa again with that stupid grin on his face, and he had his elbows up just enough to show off his mid-section under the dark sports-jacket he was wearing in the quiet night.

Lovino'd heard him and Antonio'd meant it and _holy shit he was so far out of his depth he was drowning._ He wasn't joking.

"I- I, I…"

"If the helmet doesn't fit then we don't have to drive there." And when his voice dipped a little again like it had the day before, falling just because he wanted Lovino to know he was being serious, the Italian felt his heart starting to pound and rattle against his ribs looking for an escape. "And if you really don't want to, then we don't have to go at all." That…

"Fucker, I'm not scared." He hadn't said anything about being scared, Lovino just plucked the insult out of the air and marched forward until he snatched the red-white-and-blue helmet from his da- er, from Antonio's grasp. He stuck it on his own head and felt the foam interior shift and settle over his hair, the whole thing coming to a snug final position over his ears and clasped over the top of his skull.

Getting on the bike was a whole other obstacle however, because he had no fucking idea where to step or what to hold onto as he-

"Careful." He very nearly pitched over the far side of the Vespa when Antonio wrapped a hand under his knee in a bizarre attempt to help stabilize him, and when Lovino's hands decided that the safest place to be was on the back of the taller man's shoulders he almost set himself on fire from embarrassment. He somehow managed to get his ass on the back end of the seat where it was supposed to be, his feet finding the uncomfortable grooves to rest in so his legs didn't go flailing off into traffic, but there was absolutely no helping his hands. "There, is that better?"

"Just drive already, will you?" When Antonio repositioned Lovino's hands so his arms were physically wrapped around him, his spine bent awkwardly trying to keep from sliding down the seat against his narrow back, there was nothing he could do about the blush burning his face or the weak way his voice just fluttered out of him.

He'd been wrong: Antonio smelt like more than just dirt, gasoline and tomatoes.

"Okay, hold on tight!"

"Wait- _not so fast!"_

But he'd been right: his crush was dead-set on mortifying him.

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**Bwahaha more Spamano next chapter. These two are such dorks.**

**If his brothers aren't mentioned again in the next chapter, it'll be the one after that :3**


	6. A Spanish Conquest (Spamano)

**No playlist.**

**Took me a few days longer to get this one done. Apparently the air-quality in Japan is killing me slowly: I think the winds changed and started blowing smog from Hiroshima into the smaller city where I live, that or the kerosene heaters I've been sitting in front of all week started getting to me.**

**Either way, here's another Spamano-chapter!**

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_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

A Spanish Conquest

In retrospect, Lovino could have said "not so fast!" about a lot of things that happened with Antonio.

The first thing was the Vespa ride through dark summer streets in Rome, weaving around the occasional car that dared come screaming at them in the twilight. Lovino couldn't keep up the effort to not slide down the seat and try to fuse with Antonio's back because the pocket of air between them as they swerved and swooped over cobbles and asphalt terrified him more than the position. He also balled his hands up in the taller man's shirt, half-aware that if he squeezed any harder he'd either break one of his date's ribs or pop one of the buttons off his silk shirt.

After that, when they arrived at the club, Lovino could have stood outside and demanded to know exactly what kind of night Antonio wanted this to be. Slowing down for five minutes might have sorted out a lot of confusion and spared him a lot of later grief, because although the blue neon sign and the blacklights at the end of a narrow stair-case leading into the ground weren't much of a sign, the clientele inside was a jolt to his system.

Lovino had been inside clubs before- not back in the states, but here in Rome his younger cousins liked the night-life their city offered. So he'd gone dancing and drinking, he'd had his ears blasted by the music and had his insides shaken by too much jumping, eyes dazzled by screaming lights and laser songs.

But he'd never, not once in his entire life, entered a gay bar.

The music was half a decibel softer than what he was used to, but it was still early in the night- and a week-night no less. It wasn't one of those scary fetishized clubs either: no buff men in cages dancing in leather garters and greased up for show, no bizarre night-creatures with piercings everywhere and tattoos that made your blood freeze. But there was a doorman who looked them both up and down before unhooking the velvet rope to let them in the door at the bottom of those steps, and there were a lot of men.

There were some women too- dressed up in high-heels and short skirts, loud jewelry and subtle make-up, but they kept to themselves under the blue lights and neon shimmers. They danced with each other, they flirted with each other, and the men were exactly the same. If anyone was conversing across gender lines then they were doing it at the bar or while sitting on the round chairs and high plastic stools that added to the ultra-modern vibe of the glowing walls and laser-generated artwork on the floors and ceiling. For once in his god-damned life, Lovino was standing in a crowd of the young and flirty and he didn't feel like he stood out at all: he was just another person, overwhelmed as he was, who was just here to drink, dance, and have fun.

Antonio paid for the drinks. At some point in the night Lovino realized he must have paid the cover to get them both into the club too, but every time he said he'd be the one to buy the next round he found his drink refilled and his wallet left unassaulted. It made sense because it was a fucking date, but damn him if he wasn't just a little pissed off about not having a say in the matter. Between that frustration and all the subtle touches to keep them together in the crowd, Lovino decided that the best way to spite him was to keep drinking.

But drinking more just made the hand touching his back or curled behind his elbow stand out to him. It got harder to distinguish Antonio's muffled voice from the back-ground beat of the club and the crowd, but he stopped caring so much about what he was saying in the first place.

They drifted between dancing together or in other knots of party-goers. One time they even ended up jumping to the beat in a small group of women that didn't care that they joined them because in a place like this the rules were different. No one batted their eye-lashes at him or got offended when he didn't move in closer trying to touch, and it was normal for two men to break away from a trio of beautiful women to focus on each other instead.

With the sweat coming down and liquor doing its thing in the pounding music between the flashing lights, Lovino didn't care that he didn't see or sense his first kiss coming until Antonio had him by the waist and mouth. He felt like he was going to short-circuit instead because he _felt_ that hand travel down the curve of his back and grab his ass, and before he could panic and say _'slow down!_' in the noise, he felt hot, heavy Spanish breaths pumping over his ear and down the side of his sweating neck.

"_You smell so damn good…"_

It was a drunk flirt, but when you were drunk too then words like that had impact, and they had meaning. When Lovino backed away off the dance-floor it must have looked too much like _'come and get me_' instead of _'wait, I need a moment_', because he didn't get a moment. There was no opportunity to listen to the shreds of sobriety whispering to him to go hide in the bathroom and wash his face, to drink some water instead of vodka and get his head on straight before moving forward. He didn't get that moment.

Instead he got another hungry kiss with his back literally pressed against the club wall. When he opened his eyes he didn't see a way out, he just saw the neon green of the lasers and lights cutting patterns on his retinas the way his date's hands were on his chest and body.

The very last coherent thought Lovino had that night was actually a very thorough question:

'_If tonight ends with sex and it ruins everything about him for me, is that okay?'_

And as soon as he had his answer it stuck with him. He held it tight in his hand and refused to let go of it, like Antonio's long, dark, sexy hair when he wound his fingers through the black locks and pulled to make that kiss deeper. He didn't lose it like the Vespa key that meant they either walked or took a taxi back to wherever they went after the club's bouncer made it clear that the establishment was for flirting, no more. And he didn't forget it like he forgot his name and his language and his dignity and everything else when his face was forced down onto thin pillows and a ratty blanket in a room he couldn't see.

Lovino had his answer, and he kept his answer, and when Antonio wanted to hear it then he said his answer over and over again, making sure he was clear and didn't hold that one thing back. It was the one thing he didn't choke on or swallow, the one thing he didn't force down and refuse to say.

Not like _'where are we?'_.

Or _'what are you doing?'_.

Or _'you're hurting me!'._

And certainly not like _'I've never done this before, please just slow down…!'_

In hindsight there were a lot of times and places, even in that one long night, where Lovino could have said _'not so fast!'_ to Antonio. But instead-

"_Fuck…"_

-he'd just said _'yes'_.

…It made picking his head up a lot harder the next morning. He felt the sunlight on his hair long before he found the will to move at all.

He was laying on his stomach with a blanket tossed over him, his face down in a thin, scratchy pillow that his arms were wrapped around. He squeezed his eyes shut and scrunched up his face a few times against the coarse fabric, and the first thing he tried moving was his knee.

His body _ached._ It wasn't terrible, but the inside of his mouth was thick and stale, and he knew if he let himself look up into the light the hang-over would crack his skull open. He was naked too, which was hard to handle because the bed didn't smell like his bed, and he'd never seen Antonio's place before, so whenever he finally deigned to take a look around he knew he'd be completely lost and disoriented.

The pain wasn't some crippling _'oh God I'm never going to walk again!' _kind of affliction. It, honestly, reminded him more of the first few weeks with his bicycle and getting used to the hard seat and bumpy road on the way to work. The soreness really wasn't where he expected it at all: it was in his hips as a result of spreading his legs in a way he simply _hadn't_ before.

It was a little more haunting to lay there and cope with the fact that he'd just had sex. He'd had sex. He'd actually done it: it was something that had happened and it had been with someone who had been driving him insane for weeks. There had been kissing, and touching, groping and palming. They'd actually had _sex._

While _drunk._

On their first _date?_

Lovino didn't expect it to hit as hard as it did, but his eyes started to burn and he very nearly wept into Antonio's pillow. He hadn't been a date, he'd been a conquest. He couldn't decide if that was a little bit better or so much worse than what he'd feared the day before, but it didn't change the fact that he was stark-naked and freshly fucked in the bed of someone who was little more than a stranger to him.

The only parts of that statement he could change were the stark-naked and lying in bed ones. That meant getting up, and now that he was humiliated and hurting Lovino found that demand suddenly easier to meet.

He picked his head up first, and he covered his eyes with one hand trying to avoid the inevitable pain of light in swollen, sensitive eyes. He opened one bleary eye slowly to the sight of a white wall with a window in it, the source of that unending sunlight, and confirmed that he was in a bed in an unfamiliar room.

There were clothes on the floor, too many to be his- a stack of magazines next to the bed in front of him had titles in Spanish and Italian, a calendar hanging on the wall in front of his face with yesterday's date circled in red. Well, at least there were no other bright red marks on it to suggest a string of nights out, but Lovino could feel a headache knocking politely on the inside of his skull waiting for a chance to grow, and he started looking around for anything that would help him out.

Like the tall glass of water and two little white pills sitting on a plate next to the bed?

'_It's asprin! ; )'_ There was also a folded sheet of paper tented next to the glass, and with blurring eyes Lovino reached for that and read the note scribbled in half-functioning Italian. He almost wished Antonio had written it in Spanish: they both had shitty grammar. _'You were too cute to wake up! I'll be back with breakfast! –Tonio.'_

That…

That didn't sound like the kind of note someone would leave a casual fuck… Did it make any sense for him to leave the apartment with Lovino still inside?

Those weird thoughts didn't stop Lovino from taking the pills and downing the entire glass of water. His body was feeling more and more like shit as the severe dehydration from last night caught up with him, the emotional barriers to progress succeeding in dragging him back down onto the bed as soon as he realized he couldn't see his pants or shirt from the mattress.

Nevermind his boxers…

That laziness immediately bit him in the ass however, because just as Lovino was settling down to pity himself a bit more he heard a door open and a cheerful whistle around a corner. He didn't know what he felt, but it made him sit up damn fast and make a proper attempt at finding his god-damned clothes.

In a sense the room resembled his because it was a complete _mess._ No dishes or creepy-crawling things, but clothes piled over magazines on top of books next to empty cardboard boxes and still more laundry strewn everywhere. A chilling something crept into his stomach and started swimming around when his hand uncovered a complicated-looking camera under the rumpled ball of his shirt. He couldn't remember any camera flashes or shutter noises last night, but there were big empty spots on his memory too.

If he'd been photographed, he'd die.

"Good morning~!" Antonio appearing in the bedroom doorway just made things worse, because Lovino was still sitting on the bed half-under the blankets with his shirt in his hands and trying to figure out how to put it on. "Oh good, you're awake! There's coffee if you want some: I got it from that little café you usually talk about." Thank god, he was wearing his usual friendly grin. "Did you sleep well? Last night was really something."

Too much chatter for him to process right now, Lovino understood all of it but he knew he just gave a slow blink trying to get through it all. Antonio was dressed and leaning on the door-jamb, black stubble growing in around his chin and mouth while his messy hair had been half-heartedly tied back again to keep it out of his way.

"It was… something, yeah." Coffee would have been a good idea, but getting cleaned up was- "You mind if I use your shower?" He couldn't shake the feeling that hot water would help him more than food or conversation.

"Of course not, it's just here across the hall- I'll get you a towel!" Antonio vanished again to do exactly that, which gave Lovino a few precious seconds to actually get his shirt on and make one last attempt to find his pants. His boxers had been crammed between the mattress and the wall and he got those on as fast as he could, but the black slacks were still M.I.A. by the time a grey cotton towel was being offered out to him.

A towel, and an arm that invited itself around his waist when he got too close, and a kiss he wasn't sure how to accept before it was done, and for some reason his arm was up and resting on Antonio's shoulder.

"Sorry if last night was a bit sudden." The arm didn't let go of him, it probably would have if he'd pushed away, but Lovino was a bit too caught up in the way it felt to be held against another body. Antonio's skin was warm under his clothes, and for all his height he didn't teeter back and forth or stumble with Lovino's weight pushing on him. His voice was softer than before and even if it embarrassed him to be this way, Lovino wanted to try that kiss again. "But at least we had fun, right?"

"I guess so…" He murmured in English, and at Antonio's confused look he nodded and forced a smile. "We did." He remembered the drinking and the dancing, he remembered what it felt like to give and get his first kisses, the electric jolt of touches and wandering hands, fingers tangled in hair and dragging each other along. Lovino felt his face beginning to heat up, but he knew the tension in his smile went away. "A lot of fun," and he meant that.

And he liked it when Antonio kissed him again with both arms around him in a hug this time. It was friendly and when Lovino leaned into it he felt comfortable, because he'd done a stupid thing last night but now he was being held and kissed by someone he hadn't thought would look at him twice. This kind of thing had never happened before so even if it hadn't come out like a fairy-tale, who was he to complain?

But it wasn't a fairy-tale.

They spent the rest of that morning sitting in the main part of Antonio's apartment: his kitchen and living space combined into one small, square little room that mimicked the layout of Lovino's apartment almost perfectly. There was a sliding glass door which led to a cramped balcony, and that was where most of their light came in as they drank café coffee and came up with things to talk about.

"Is that another camera?" Like the fact that every time Lovino stared at a corner of the cluttered space for too long, he'd find another lens tilted on its side or staring at him from on top of a pile of magazines.

"Ah, I love photography…" He honestly did, it was a passion that, if Lovino let himself keep asking leading questions, Antonio would just talk and talk and talk about it. Resolutions, shutter speeds, colour saturation, lighting techniques, development techniques, chemical components, hazards, risks, _really fucking stupid risks. "_I took this one by climbing over a banister in Vatican City last summer, it was-"

"You're fucking insane." And also barred from entering the Vatican City in Rome, but Antonio had his photos and that seemed to make him happy. "But you're talented." Because more importantly, scattered in the mess of magazines and books on agriculture and colour composition were the awards that went with the rolls of film.

"My parents wanted me to have a real job, so I studied agriculture." Which he had a passion for too, because pinned to his walls in several places were landscapes and farming valleys, locations in Spain, Italy, and around the world peeking out from behind lamps and bookshelves. "Plants are incredibly photogenic, but only if you sing to them nicely!" Sing to them…

"You're such a dork," Lovino snorted into the dredges of his coffee, poking half-heartedly at the toasted sandwich crust left on his plate after the brunch he'd made for them.

"And you're not as mean as you like to pretend." He knew that lowering his cup would invite a touch on his face and warm lips that teased his, but Lovino did it anyways. "Really, I think you're very shy…" He let Antonio kiss him, and then kiss him again, and when he was coaxed to stand up he clumsily followed the older man's lead just like he had the night before.

"I should go home-"

"Why? Stay a little longer…" Maybe just a few more minutes, only long enough to feel his shirt fall open again. "You're so cute when you blush." He'd stay until Antonio stopped kissing his throat like that, he'd leave as soon as those hot, burning touches let him catch his breath again. "Mm, lay down…"

He'd get out of this mess, but only once he figured out _how._

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**Woah, Spain, simmer down. But if you read it, review it? Come give your opinion on dear Antonio!**

**Next update soon-ish. For now I have work.**


	7. Not a Shitty Brother (Spamano)

**Dizzy, C'est La Vie, Mr. Hurricane, Will You Be There?, Who Knew?**

**This fic writes itself, it's great, but one day I will write Antonio happily involved in a relationship that doesn't end badly.**

**I really really really appreciate all the wonderful reviews I keep getting on this story!**

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_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

Not a Shitty Brother

(so fuck you)

Antonio's problem was boundaries: he couldn't see them.

"That was… your first time?"

Lovino's problem was also boundaries: he couldn't enforce them.

"Yes, now shut up about it."

When you took those two dysfunctions and forced them into the same relationship, it just proved the point Lovino had been repeating from the start: his love with Antonio was not a fairy-tale.

"You should have said something!" A fairy-tale might have been able to tell when Lovino didn't want to talk about something. "Why didn't you let me know?" A fairy-tale would have stopped _ramming his point into the ground._ "A club of all places- we could have just gone for dinner or driven around Rome or something! You should have-"

"Then _you_ should have paid more attention!" If it bugged Antonio that fucking much to know he was Lovino's first, then it should have been _his _god-damned responsibility to figure that stuff out before getting them both drunk!

Lovino knew he cared- I mean he knew he didn't care. Or maybe he did- he didn't know, alright? What he remembered of his first time was intense and borderline uncomfortable. What he regretted about his second time was how it was interrupted by the revelation about the first time, and then promptly ended with them both angrily getting dressed and yelling at each other about who was at fault.

His self-pity dinner was cold and waiting for him in his fridge to unpack and devour when he got home. Lovino didn't touch his knives all afternoon: he just took another shower, drank three bottles of water to kill his hang-over, took a brisk walk around Rome to clear his head before coming back to his apartment, and then went to bed after forbidding himself from crying.

The next day at work was hard.

The next delivery the morning after that was both better and worse.

"I'm sorry." Lovino didn't say it: he'd convinced himself that the "relationship" was over before it even started. He didn't expect Antonio to apologize to him, and when he appeared with that and a rose Lovino was completely stumped. "Can I try again? Dinner this time: a proper first date with no pressure!"

"If… it means that much to you… alright."

Alright he said. Alright to a second-first date with no pressure, no expectation, just the two of them taking another harrowing ride on Antonio's Vespa. Lovino didn't expect an American-style burger joint to be the place where his date brought him, but he also hadn't known where to ditch the bundle of carnations he'd been given before climbing on the machine.

"I'm not a girl: you don't need to give me flowers." But as stupid as the damned things made him feel, they told him that at least his date was _trying._ "And I'll pay this time!"

Antonio still wound up paying because it seemed to mean that fucking much to him. Lovino was just happy he could hide his nose in the same brand of American bear Yao had always bought for them to share back in the States. Even if it tasted just as bad in Italy as it had back home, it was a bit of comfort while waiting for his temper to cool off against his date.

The boundary they set up for their second date was no pressure: no expectation. Just a meal and conversation, just a walk around the nearby piazza, just Lovino telling Antonio not to climb on things like a monkey because he didn't even have a camera with him anyways- so cut it out! They had their line in the sand and they had fun staying on the safe side of it.

"I'm really sorry though!" Except for whenever Antonio opened his mouth with that fucking apology. "No, you don't get it. Your first time should be something special, something very tender and-"

"I don't give a _shit_, 'tonio."

"But you should!" _Well he didn't!_ "If you'd let me try again then I would do a much better job."

Lovino's answer was just a frustrated huff and several bi-lingual curses, because he was so fucking pissed about his boyfriend being so fucking hung-up on the issue.

Which was why both of them had a serious problem with boundaries. Their night was supposed to be about eating and talking and getting along while having a bit of stupid fun. Antonio should not have been so preoccupied with making up for the first time, and Lovino should not have been so fed up and curious about a second time.

So it was his own stupid fucking fault when, at the planned end of their evening, Lovino made the first move and gave his boyfriend more than just a chaste kiss. And it was Antonio's fucking fault for putting his hands on him like that to hold him in place. And it was Lovino's fault for letting himself remember how intoxicating that smoky something about Antonio's skin was.

And ultimately it was Antonio's fault for doing a much, _much_ better job the second time around…

Their relationship was about sex. It was built on it. It relied on it. Their first major fight was when Lovino told him for the last-fucking-time not to touch him at work when making his deliveries. His life was not a porno flick where every time the doorbell rang he had to drop his pants and bend over: he wouldn't fucking do it.

But that didn't stop Antonio from just showing up outside Lovino's apartment with a bottle of wine and a bouquet of roses, and it didn't stop Lovino from letting him in every time he did it. It didn't matter how frustrated he got with the flowers or his boyfriend's failed attempts to serenade him: he never actually carried out the threat to smash whichever camera the bastard pulled out at inappropriate times to photograph him. He didn't give a shit how good he looked in the morning light, half-decent with the bedding and glare off the camera lens, it was fucking embarrassing to have his picture taken, one, without his permission, and two, when he wasn't even _awake_ for it.

But for some strange reason, Lovino still didn't say no when his boyfriend invited him south for a weekend to a small hotel on the sea. At least, Antonio _said_ it was on the sea: for all Lovino knew it could have been in the middle of a desert or way the hell up in the mountains. He never left the room for long enough to figure out where exactly he was staying, and for the price they had to pay for transportation, food and travel, they probably could have just stayed home and done the same thing.

At least he still saw and went out with his cousins. Lovino still went to work as expected, and he even managed to get himself placed permanently on the Lunch service as a sous-chef. Life moved forward, but one thing did not.

"I think I could do it." One stupid thing did not.

"That's silly! Are you saying I'm no good?" And that one stupid thing didn't happen because Antonio wouldn't agree to it.

"Don't make it sound like a big deal, I just want to try." And his refusal was frustrating, because in a relationship that was built on sex, and focused on sex, and only really functioned properly with the promise of hot, sweaty, intense sex at the end of almost every exchange, playing the same role every time felt cheap. Asking to be the one in control, just once, felt like a small and curious thing that Lovino should have had a right to. Should have.

"Why don't I try and convince you otherwise, hmm?" But that didn't matter to Antonio because he still always got his way in the end. It just started to mean a whole lot more to Lovino when he realized his boyfriend was the only one with the power to say no in this stressful relationship.

Their second major fight was during dying days of that summer, when autumn was shyly waiting over the horizon and holding off on its arrival. Lovino would have been pissed off and begging for a break in the heat, but he didn't care because something more important was happening.

Or rather, someone more important was coming.

"_Two weeks!?_" And it wasn't the fun kind of "coming" either, but if Antonio had taken the news with just a shred more decorum Lovino might have offered that in exchange for his understanding. "What do you mean we can't see each other? Are you mad at me? Lovi don't go springing these things on-"

"I'm not springing anything!" He was so glad that his Italian had increased so much so fast over the last several months, because trying to deal with Antonio with the broken language would have frustrated him too much to keep trying.

Honestly, it was already hard enough trying to deal with anything about Antonio that didn't involve sex. The case in point right then was the swollen feeling Lovino was trying to sit-up around on the couch where he'd just been abandoned, his tie undone and hanging around his neck, the first few buttons on his nice red shirt quickly opened.

There hadn't been a real reason for them to dress up tonight, but they'd done it: men looked better in suits, it was a fact. Two well-dressed men could dine in a nice restaurant, near the back, over a candle and good wine without attracting too much attention. Lovino wasn't so good with touches or kisses in public, but Antonio was good at timing those things and keeping them from being noticed by anyone but him. It was easier to be a bit bolder in the taxi on the way home, whichever home they were going to, and from there it was just a quick run up the stairs to somebody's door with the key in hand and whatever flat surface Lovino could get to first before Antonio inevitably caught him.

But now the fucker'd abandoned him on the couch, and Lovino just wanted to throw the wine-bottle at him screaming: _get over here and fuck me, damn it._

Instead Antonio was standing there with his hands on his hips, his jacket back in place over his shoulders where Lovino had been in the middle of pulling it off his back. At least his hair was loose, the long black locks tousled and just waiting for Lovino to get a hold of them again. But the idiot wasn't smiling: not the goofy or the sexy one, he was actually, of all things, _pissed off._

"When did you make this decision? I haven't heard of it."

"For fuck's sake, Antonio! I told you last week!"

"That you were dumping me for half a month? I don't remember that!" _He wouldn't._ So Lovino had to stand up and explain it all over again with his temper fraying by the moment:

"I told you: my brother will be in Rome starting on Saturday and _you can't be here!_" Feliciano was coming to Rome. Lovino had missed his graduation ceremony, but he'd put up half the air-fare to get his brother to fly out for two precious weeks and spend them with him and the rest of their extended family in Italy. He'd wanted him for the entire summer starting right after commencement, but things just hadn't come together until now.

"Why not?"

"_Because I'm not out!"_ They'd had this discussion. They'd had this discussion before, and now they were having it again: Lovino was dating a fucking gold-fish. He cut the air with his hands trying to make the same old fucking point as before one more god-damned time for the idiot to try and understand: "I'm not out! No one knows, and I'm not telling them! It's two fucking weeks, Antonio and I'm going to spend them with him, not you!"

"Why?" He didn't expect Antonio to challenge him. Usually if anybody was going to yell it would be Lovino, and the person to diffuse it and put the issue to bed was Antonio. It wasn't like him to rise up and lock horns with him, but he did it: "If he's the kind of son-of-a-bitch to turn around and hate you just because-"

"**Don't.**" Lovino couldn't hear himself, he didn't know what his voice sounded like, he just knew it stopped Antonio's words dead and made his boyfriend stare at him for a good five seconds without moving. Lovino needed that silence and that pause before he could even begin putting together words, nevermind their Italian counterparts. He just stood there with one arm raised and a finger pointing at his lover, and he walked slowly across the dangerously thin ice of that moment. "Son of a _bitch_? Don't." It didn't matter how colloquial the insult was, it didn't matter that it didn't mean exactly what it had once meant, it was still off limits: no one was going to insult his mother.

"Lovino-"

"If you play dumb right now, 'tonio then I don't want you to come back after he's gone." Antonio knew what his brothers meant to him. Antonio _knew_ what his family meant to him. Their relationship was flawed and it was dysfunctional, but they still fucking _talked_ and they still damned well knew each other.

Lovino knew that it had been a minor thing for Antonio's parents to accept. Lovino knew that Antonio chafed every time Lovino wanted to hide things or behave subtly. He hated not holding hands in public or sharing a kiss on a street corner, because love to him was just love and sex was just pleasure and fun and intimacy all wrapped up together in smiles and lingering touches.

Lovino was bad about not enforcing rules: don't kiss me in the marketplace, don't touch me at work, if you're going to serenade me then for fuck's sake don't do it so loudly that the neighbours hear or see you.

Lovino was bad about getting his way: maybe I want to take a walk along the beach, dumbass. Why can't I be on top for once?

But Lovino-Fucking-Vargas was not a shitty brother. He was not going to upset Feliciano with his stupid sexual nonsense. He was not going to put his brother up on the same tightrope that Lovino was used to walking between fake interest in girls and imaginary relationships to calm Nonna's nerves. He'd fake it until he died if that was what it took to make sure Nonno never took back the words "You make us proud".

This was not another line in the sand for Lovino, this was a concrete wall with gun-turrets and a metal sign bolted to it that read "Trespassers will be shot on sight, survivors will be shot again", because on the other side of that line stood his family, and Lovino would do anything to protect them.

"Fine." Lovino would do anything to _keep_ them. "Do what you want. Two weeks: have fun without me."

So his last meeting with his boyfriend before his brother arrived was shit, but in the final hours before Feliciano's plane landed: Lovino stopped caring.

Marcello and Giorgio were there again at the airport like they'd been for Lovino, but he made damn sure to come with them both for the pick-up. He took the day off work, he made sure his apartment was spotless, he stocked his fridge with his brother's favourite foods, and he found himself pining over the fact that Carlino wasn't coming out too.

Carlino and Nonna and Nonno too…

Yeah, that would have made it better.

But to be perfectly honest, picking his little brother out of the sleepy crowd of jet-lagged travelers made the pining aches go away. He saw Feliciano first with a laptop bag over his shoulder and a hefty black suitcase rolling behind him, nevermind the dazed and confused look on his round face, and with a sharp whistle he got his brother to look up and try and figure out what the sound was for.

Somehow Feliciano saw him and Lovino moved to find the clearest path between them, something made easier by the fact that Feliciano physically dropped both his bags and broke into a flat run to reach him.

The way their arms locked around each other, one arm over one shoulder each, and then squeezed and squeezed like they had when they were kids trying to make the other one give up: it was a release Lovino hadn't known he'd needed and a reason to laugh that he took with both eyes closed and all his faith tossed into the leap. Feliciano just babbled something sleep-deprived and miserable and I've-missed-you into his shoulder and didn't let go.

"Are you crying, you big baby?" The warmth on his shoulder suggested it, but Lovino just held the idiot's head close and laughed over his ear, hugging him a little tighter until he heard his brother grunt a little from his ribs cracking. "Cut it out, you're taller than I am now."

"Airplane food _sucks_…" Yes it did, but he'd survived it.

"C'mon, there's a pot of Nonna's bolognaise sauce with your name on it at the house." At least, there would be so long as Chichi'd done what he'd fucking said and not added anything to it while his back was turned.

It felt a little bit like when they'd been younger, but in a good way, when Feliciano decided he was going to follow and tag along next to Lovino all day. It was like looking back nine months at himself while his brother fumbled the language and hid from the pinches and coos their female relatives tried to shower him with. At one point during the welcome dinner Lovino actually _was_ a barricade, and all he really did was casually lean against the bathroom door and profess to Chichi and her friend Alice that he honestly had no idea where Feliciano had vanished off to: had she checked outside?

They both spent the night at Chiara's house because it was nearly 2 a.m. before the last of the conversations died and the guests departed. They shared a room together with Lovino contently lying on the floor, and although they tried to talk a little bit, it was just too much for Feliciano to manage: his brother was dead asleep before Lovino'd even gotten comfortable.

He woke up the next morning with a sealed envelope on his pillow, addressed to Feliciano, from the Illinois State University.

And his brother, that stupid shit, wasn't there to _open it._

* * *

**Bwahahaha… Review!**

**I forgot to answer this a while ago, but I love the cooking AU because yes! I can cook! But I have no training and most of my recipes are sort of hit-and-miss. 80% of the cooking lingo and information I have comes from Food Network programs like Hell's Kitchen, Canada's Next Top Chef, Chopped, Drivers Diners and Drive-thrus, etc. I love Food Network, and while I'm in Japan I'm GOING TO MISS IT SO MUUUU-HUUU-HUUUUCH…!**

**As far as travelling is concerned. I'm currently living in Japan! In Canada I'm from the culturally colourful city of Vancouver, I've spent 3 very short weeks in Lebanon, and have toured Northern France and the Netherlands, and worked for 3 weeks in Belgium. Where descriptions of Italy are concerned, I'm a tinsy bit obsessed with the country and the characters, so I look up pictures all the time and really would love to eventually live/work there the way I am here in Japan.**

**That's more than you needed to know about me, so, again! Please leave a review below and I'll get to work on the next chapter!**

**Thanks!**


	8. Someone Who Just Wants What's Best

**Mr. Hurricane, Where Did the Beat Go?, Beam Me Up, Family Portrait.**

**It went well and then it went not.**

* * *

_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

Someone Who Just Wants What's Best

Lovino's stupid, frustrating, absent-minded, annoying little shit of a younger brother was _nowhere_ in their cousin's house when Lovino went tearing through it trying to find him. He heard himself cursing and swearing under his breath as he moved down the stairs and around corners, muttering all the awful things he'd do to that idiot when he caught him.

"Good morning to you too, Grumpy-gills." Shut up, Chichi! "What's wrong?"

"Where the fuck is your cousin?" He hissed, ignoring the plate of food his cousin was holding or the way she was awkwardly tugging on the edge of her short summer night-gown. He didn't fucking _care_ how she looked, damn it.

"You're going to have to be more specific…"

"My brother! Where is that little shit-head?"

"Your mood certainly turned quickly!" HE DIDN'T NEED HER ADVICE ON BEING A BIG BROTHER RIGHT NOW SO ANSWER HIM. "No wonder he ran off so early: he went with Papa to do grocery shopping and see the neighbourhood. They left an hour ago."

"How the fuck did he wake up before me anyways?" As tempting as it was to run out and try to track the moron down, Lovino just sat at his cousin's table and fumed, relentlessly tapping the thick, creamy envelope in his hand against the stone countertop. Chiara's patience ran out about as quickly as his and she nearly managed to snatch it away from him.

"What is that thing? Is that why you're so upset?"

"It's a letter from the school he applied to back in the states." And it wasn't open, why the fuck wouldn't Feliciano have opened it? This shit was important: arguably more important than him even being in Italy to see him.

It took another god-damned hour and Chiara almost biting his head off several times about his pissy attitude before they heard the door open. Lovino was on his feet and placed himself three steps up the staircase, waiting until he heard his moron brother bumble something in Italian trying to say good-morning to Chiara and ask if Lovino was awa-

"_Feliciano!"_

"_NO NO NO!"_

It was a fast fight, which meant Feliciano knew he was a stupid shit because he was also tall enough now that he could, maybe, have wrestled Lovino off of him. Instead they wound up with the older brother locking a choke-hold around the younger one's neck, his back all twisted and Lovino taking only enough care to keep his knee from jamming into his sibling's spine. He didn't want to hurt the fucker: just teach him a lesson!

"What the hell is wrong with you!? Papa stop them!"

"I think your nonno and theirs used to fight like that too, Chichi. It's okay."

"_Men!_"

"Read your fucking letter you piece of shit." Lovino hissed, ignoring it when Feliciano smacked his hand twice on the floor asking to be let up. Reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, he tore out the letter and held it in front of the idiot's red face.

"What did it say?" He wasn't actually strangling his brother, but Feliciano just scratched at the tiles instead of taking the stupid envelope.

"I don't know: now open it!"

"No, you do i-_eck!_" _Now _he was choking him!

"_Stop that!_"

Lovino didn't understand the bolt of cold that hit him in the side of the head, not until two more blasts hit him in the face and shoulder. He had to let go of Feliciano to move away from the water, but when he looked up and saw the nozzle of a squirt-bottle pointed right at him-

_FUCK._

_NO- STOP!_

"_Chiara-!_"

"Don't. Hurt._ My little cousin!"_

She sprayed him and she didn't fucking _stop_ until Lovino had not only gotten off his little brother, but she chased him all the way into a fucking corner with a wet shirt and dripping hair.

"I wasn't hurting him! You're insane!" It wasn't until he accidentally held the letter up to defend himself that she finally cut it out! And fuck Feliciano for laughing so damn hard at him over this!

"And you're worse than the cat- give me that!" She snatched the paper out of his hand, and when he tried to get it back she threatened him with that fucking bottle again. She didn't even put the stupid thing down as she turned away from him either, just tucked the plastic under her arm as he heard the dry rip of paper.

"That's not for you!" Lovino didn't expect his little brother to say the same thing in English that he blurted out in Italian, but the livid green glare he got back over Chiara's shoulder told him to shut up. Feliciano saw his opening and took it to try and explain something stupid:

"No wait! Let Lovino read it," oh come _on!_

"It's got your god-damned name on it, Feliciano!"

"So?" If they kept going back and forth like this then they were actually going to fight, because from his spot sitting on the floor Lovino could see Feliciano trying to give him a harsh look. Why was he wet too? Had Chiara sprayed him when he wasn't looking?

"_Congratulations, Feliciano Vargas!"_ But they were interrupted by Chiara's heavily accented voice as she started reading the opening lines of the letter. "_You have-a been accepted to the program of…_ a something?"

Oh… that…

That is, he'd known that was what it would say. He'd known his brother would get in to wherever he applied for University. With his marks it hadn't really been a question, just a waiting game that carried only shadows of doubt with it.

But hearing it said was still something else, so when Feliciano stood up and gently took the letter from Chiara so he could read it properly, Lovino finally accepted the clean dish-towel his cousin Marcello was holding out for him to dry his face and hair with. He also walked back into the kitchen, standing next to his brother while Feliciano's brown eyes read, and then re-read what was in front of him before wordlessly handing the page over.

It was only a paragraph printed on thick paper with the elaborate university crest patterned across the top and bottom. It was his name in black script followed by the name of the art and history program that had agreed to give him a seat. The world felt very quiet as he soaked up just that first two lines, ignoring the bottom two until he saw Feliciano's hand hovering close and then tap one of them.

The word he touched was "scholarship".

"I…" Jesus Christ, they were giving him a scholarship with too many zeroes on the end for Lovino to read right now. He wasn't crying, Chiara'd just sprayed him in the fucking eye with that water. "I know you were worried, even with Papa's money, about helping to pay my tuition but-" Lovino didn't want to look at him right now, he didn't want Feliciano to see what his stupid face was doing. "But I have another two thousand dollars from scholarships I applied to: that's why I couldn't come at the start of summer…" And that meant that what Lovino had saved up in the bank already would go to Carlino instead, so he was suddenly years ahead of where he'd thought he'd be for his youngest brother. "I… I'm sorry if it's not-"

"What the fuck do you have to be sorry for?" Lovino didn't look at him, he didn't let him see the stupid wet that wouldn't get off his face, he just turned and grabbed him. He pulled him into a hug that wasn't supposed to squeeze him into submission or try and prove that Lovino was still the bigger and stronger one, he just hugged him, he hugged him and he refused to let go.

"Are you proud of me?" It was such a weird question to hear murmured against his shoulder, and Lovino didn't even want to acknowledge it. But if Feliciano had to ask then:

"You stupid shit: of course I'm proud of you." And if his brother got further ahead in life than he did, then Lovino would _always_ be proud of him.

Two weeks together wasn't enough. It was too short. Two weeks was too damn short a time, no matter how cramped Lovino's small apartment was with a second person inside. He'd cleared away and packed up anything of Antonio's that had been given to him or just left laying around: he'd chucked out the last bouquet of carnations and stuffed the vase his boyfriend had bought for them in the back of his cupboard. Most of the photos were taken down and stashed under his bed, only the ones where they passed as just friends earning the privilege of letting Feliciano see them and, between asking the names of all his other friends, learning a little bit about him.

"I met Antonio through work, we hang out a lot." Summer hurled one last sweltering week of sunshine at them while Feliciano was there. It meant that after the first week was spent on bicycles around Rome and a two-day sprint up to Venice for his brother's artistic side, the last few days were much quieter and spent suffering in front of Lovino's air-conditioner trying not to die.

"I was gonna ask to meet him…" Lovino had also had to go back to work for the second week and that had left Feliciano with their cousins for most of the day. But Thursday and Friday this week were his days off, so at too-hot in the afternoon he watched his brother physically bend over the coughing machine struggling to cool the air down. "I was gonna…"

"Maybe next time." But definitely not. "Shove over, idiot, you're blocking the air!"

His apartment had a tile floor and concrete walls plastered with white and decorated sparsely with nails and a few pieces of Antonio's landscape photography. It felt like the walls themselves were starting to melt, and as he muscled his brother over where they were both sitting on the floor by the open window, a fan in the corner hitting them with _moving_ air, Lovino expected to hear their skin start sizzling on the terracotta. They weren't even in the god-damned sunlight.

"No, don't hit me- it's too hot…" They'd tried the public pool yesterday and been told to go home because it was over capacity. They'd wanted to go to the beach but Chiara had said the only good beaches were better to have a few more people for: they'd do that tomorrow with her and some friends, so God help them if they went today without her. They'd been steadily running Lovino's water-bill up by jumping in the shower for three minute blitzes with the cold spray. They were sitting in just their shorts absolutely _miserable _from the heat.

"You know what we need?" Another ocean, or maybe a river to come crashing through his neighbourhood? "Ice cream."

"And see, smart ideas like that are why you got into university." But getting ice-cream from anywhere meant that had to compete with each other to use the cold shower first- which was a lie because they were too zonked from the heat to even manage a proper rock-scissors-paper match, nevermind get up and race for the fountain of relief. Feliciano took the first trip to the shower, and after Lovino got a turn and suffered with putting his head through a cotton tee-shirt, there was a soft knock on the front door just before he found his house keys.

"_Hola!_" And then something in his brain abruptly boiled over with panic, because it was too damn hot out for his blood to freeze when he heard that voice. "You must be Lovi's little brother! How are you enjoying Italy?"

Feliciano could smile through anything, but when he took a glance at Lovino before he'd sorted out what his face was doing, his little brother's expression started to strain. The question _'Lovi?'_ floated between them because he'd always hated that nickname, and he still hated that nickname, but Antonio used it so comfortably that there was no denying that he had Lovino's grudging permission to use it.

He wanted to know, except Lovino really didn't want to know, why his brother wasn't answering the question. His legs felt heavy when he used them, but he found himself standing next to Feliciano in fewer steps than he should have needed, and then he understood what his brother was staring at and fumbling to find words for.

Carnations.

Antonio was holding a bundle of red Carnations, the kind he always brought when Lovino was mad at him. What made things worse was how they were tied with a silk ribbon this time and it wasn't even the usual trio of blossoms: he'd gone for a full dozen.

"Leave." Lovino's command got mixed in with Antonio's refusal:

"Aren't you going to introduce us?" No, he was not going to fucking introduce them, he was having a hard enough time just trying to keep _breathing_ in the stagnant air.

"I said fuck off, Antonio, I warned you." He'd warned him, he'd asked him, he'd begged him, he'd threatened him, and yet here his boyfriend stood with flowers and something wrong about his smile that told Lovino how this was no mistake. He hadn't mis-counted the number of days, he wasn't surprised that Feliciano had answered the door, Antonio had done this on purpose. He was deliberately trying to _hurt_ him…

Antonio was dressed for the heat the same way they were: white shorts that came down over his knees, sandals on his big feet and sunglasses nestled on top of his wayward dark hair, his ponytail trailing down between the shoulders of his red and yellow Spanish soccer jersey. He had his free hand resting on his hip and the flowers held down at his side, sweat misted over his dark skin from the heat he'd had to walk through to get here. His green eyes were sober and challenging.

"At least apologize to him then."

"'_tonio!_"

"What-?"

Feliciano had put himself in the background, taking a step away and letting Lovino move between the two of them, blocking the doorway in case, for some god-forsaken reason, Antonio tried to muscle his way inside. But when his boyfriend looked past him at his brother, Feliciano dropped the confused sound and then spoke up quickly in English:

"Vino what's going on? What's he doing here?"

English for his brother:

"I don't know-"

Italian for his ex-lover:

"I told you to _leave!_"

"No!" Lovino could hear the paper crinkling as Antonio clenched his fist around the flower stems, but at least he didn't try barging inside. "You don't trust him, is that it?" Except that when he started spouting angry words at Feliciano Lovino didn't know what to say to drown them out: "He doesn't trust you, how does that make you feel? Your own brother thinks you're full of ignorance and hate! You're someone he has to lie to day in and day out because-"

_NO!_

His entire world flashed red and white. Lovino was too terrified to get angry as he felt himself try to lash out with a punch to stop the hateful words peppering the air. Instead of striking Antonio instead he felt his arm glance off the one that rose to block him, and then muscle-memory betrayed him. Lovino's first love roared up into his personal space with one hand that wrapped around behind his head and the other that snagged his wrist to stop him from lashing out.

His back hit the doorjamb and Feliciano's voice exploded with outrage, but none of that stopped familiar lips and the once-addicting stink of Spanish smoke and ebony locks from getting the better of him, from humiliating him, and from doing more than just push Lovino off his tightrope walk.

Antonio didn't just send him over the edge into the darkness of judgement and revolt, he betrayed him by slashing the rope and letting him plummet without a net.

* * *

**I try to ship Spamano, or at least be nice to it because it is a nice ship. **

**I try and I try and in the end I always write Spain as a douche.**

**HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A LOT NICER NOT ATTACK A CRITICAL BOND IN LOVINO'S LIFE OR ASSAULT HIM I DON'T KNOW OKAY?**

**Fall-out next chapter. Leave a review? Maybe help me come up with a better way for Spain to have done that? Waaahg…**


	9. Sort Of Okay In A Crisis

**Xenoblade Main Theme, Empty, Soldiers (Piano Ver.), Family Portrait.**

**I got it done fast, hurrah!**

* * *

_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

Sort of Okay In A Crisis

Feliciano punched him.

Not Lovino.

He punched Antonio so hard he must have put all his weight into it, because Lovino's ex actually hit the concrete floor in the building hallway. It stunned both of them because on Antonio's side he'd just had a set of knuckles crack against his cheek, and Lovino's mind had already shut down in an effort to keep himself standing without screaming.

Feliciano was shouting enough for all three of them:

"Who the hell are you!? What the _fuck_ do you think you're doing? Touching him like that- are you _sick?_" It was English mixed with Italian, and if Lovino could translate it then maybe there were a few flecks of Spanish- not for Antonio's benefit, but just from his brother's penchant for language classes in school. "Don't you _dare _fucking come near him again or I-!" He could remember the last time Feliciano had screamed because it had been at Lovino telling him to leave home for Italy, but he could _not_ remember when he'd last seen his little brother furious enough to turn violent. "I-! I'll think of something just-_!_"

"Stop…" Feliciano temper didn't have any staying power, Lovino could see the rage crumbling just by taking a fast, stunned look at his brother's face as Feliciano tried storming past him. He got his numb arms up first though, making his body push away from the door frame and bump hard against his brother's. "_Stop…" _He didn't know what kind of hug it was, his back turned against Antonio and his hands looking for a shoulder or a wrinkle in Feliciano's shirt to hold on to. Lovino was too numb already for the fear that maybe his brother would force him off, which meant it calmed some of the ringing in his ears when he felt his sibling tightly clamp his arms around him instead. He even followed Lovino's lead as he tried pushing him back into the apartment.

"It's okay, Feliciano." It was not okay, everything was so far from okay right now. Lovino just said the lie and there must have been something wrong with his voice, because it made his brother stop clinging quite so hard and cut off the furious sounds he was still spitting at Antonio.

It wasn't okay. It wasn't okay for a stranger to stand at his door and tell his brother that Lovino had lied to him, or that he'd always _been_ lying to him. It wasn't okay for that stranger who Lovino had trusted and loved to take something like this into his own unskilled hands. It wasn't right for Antonio to take a tactic that would make some people only upset and use it on someone who, if Lovino knew his brother right, would lose a lot more than just his temper if their bond was questioned.

It wasn't okay for Antonio to take things out of his hands like this, to take control over something he wasn't even a part of. He'd been a lot of Lovino's firsts: his first real love, his first time, his first kisses and dates. He'd been late nights out dancing or sitting by just talking before the touches started again, he'd been something like freedom and relief from the stress of standing up too high and all alone.

"Are you going to tell him now?"

But then he'd done _this._

"Lovino…?" He'd done this and the numbness gave way to the cold when Lovino realized Feliciano'd let go of him a little bit, stepping back through the heat he couldn't feel anymore and staring at his face. "Lovino, what's wrong? What does he want you to tell me?" His brother looked upset, and then his brother looked _scared._

"Tell me what's happened- Lovino?" And it was the kind of scared look that Lovino only barely remembered seeing once, in a locked school bathroom after a hard winter's day trying to deal with what he was and who he was going to become. It wasn't the white terror of a bully coming after the smartest kid in the class, or the teary-eyes from a nightmare that sent him tapping at Lovino's door for comfort. It was wide eyes and hitched shoulders, a forced attempt at a crooked smile with teeth clenched trying to stay calm. His brother had both hands on his arms holding on stiffly, and when Lovino felt himself being shaken softly, he quickly touched his own face looking for the cause of Feliciano's fear.

And he found it.

Tears.

A man shouldn't to cry in front of the people he was supposed to protect. Lovino's grandfather had told him that over two years ago, and somewhere in his subconscious Lovino had understood that the words meant the old man had been passing the responsibility on to someone else. Maybe he'd meant it for the dying son who hadn't been able to take care of his children, but it made more sense to think that maybe he'd meant it for the grandson who didn't know how to cope with the direction his life was taking.

"Say something…"

"Feliciano, I'm gay." They weren't messing around trying to whisper to each other in Italian, they just couldn't be comfortable enough in that language to deal with such an awful subject like this. It meant Antonio didn't get to understand the exchange, and that was probably what gave Lovino the courage to finally say it. His brother's face, which he was watching so closely because he had to see his reaction, didn't change: it meant he didn't understand. "Antonio is my boyfriend."

Ex-boyfriend.

Ex-lover.

Not his current one anymore, because Lovino knew he wouldn't be able to forgive him for today. He'd forgiven so many things in their relationship already, but he'd crossed the line: he'd climbed the wall and taken shots at the people Lovino kept protected behind it.

Or at least that was what Lovino had been trying to do, because when Feliciano's hands snapped back like the touch burned, his world gave a sharp, painful contraction.

"You- _what?_" The next thing to go was his vision, because he was either too proud or too scared to wipe away the tears that were forming faster than he could manage. Instead Lovino just dropped his eyes to the floor. "But we're… The whole family is…" Catholic? Yes, he knew that: he knew what was waiting for him after this life.

"I haven't told anyone." Where he found the breath for speech was a mystery, because the sun was glaring off the tiles and he could almost hear his tears hissing off the floor with the heat he couldn't feel. "Please, God, don't tell-"

"But _you're…?_" Feliciano wouldn't say it and Lovino couldn't pick his head up and look at him. They just stood there, not touching, with the sweltering air standing between them. He watched his brother's shoes scuffle and clop over the floor, agitation written in the scattered movements. The next thing Feliciano said wasn't even directed at him, it was just frustrated grunts, words spitting off his lips. "_Can't even tell him to go away-_" Who? "_-think this is a joke? At least turn around…!"_

Lovino just wanted to hear an answer, but instead he heard footsteps before he felt a hand come down on his shoulder, the other one touching the small of his back as Antonio seemed to think his presence was wanted. If anything it just made Feliciano stop moving, and it frustrated Lovino through the storm of emotion and made him jerk away from the hold.

"Don't touch_-!_" They both said it at the same time, one in English and the other in Italian. It was Feliciano who shouted it while Lovino barely managed the murmur, but it got their point across.

And Antonio actually listened, which was something new all in itself. But just because he listened didn't mean he had a right to-

"I know you're both upset right now, but Lovi this-"

He had no right to break the silence, he had no right to try _speaking_ to either of them or calling Lovino by a pet-name he barely tolerated. The only thing that kept him from lashing out and saying something about it was the way Antonio's voice got Feliciano to move.

It got him to move, but more like storm, straight across the floor and past Lovino without a word. His head snapped up in terror when his brother didn't stop going and the feet that hit the concrete floor outside started _running_ and-

"_Feliciano!"_ No! No, God don't leave-! Don't turn away from him!

He wanted to scream when he whipped around and there was only an empty doorway left staring at him. He wanted to shout and beg for someone who'd been too fast for him to stop. He wanted a reset, a do-over, he wanted anything that would trade his lover for his brother because a break-up was one thing- _but losing his family was something else entirely._

"Lovino…?"

Lovino wanted so much in that moment with tears blinding him and his empty stomach screaming to vomit acid and self-hate, but he didn't move. He couldn't connect with what had just happened, he couldn't cope with the change that had just taken over.

"Don't _ever_ speak to me again."

When he found the first fragments of himself again in the hurricane blowing through his brain, he used them to stab Antonio and tell him to get the fuck out of his life.

"How long were you going to wait, Lovino?" And Antonio somehow had the gall to fight with him, to argue for a _'them'_ that didn't exist anymore. "It had to happen eventually, and I'm still here."

"Forever." And ever, and ever, he would have faked it until he died. "I was going to wait forever, and I was going to keep my family _for-fucking-ever!_" Maybe he'd just put himself out of his misery now before the floodgates opened and the real horror came washing over him. He was a quitter who'd failed his way through high school and scrimped and scraped for every inch he'd earned in here in Italy, why not just throw in the towel now that there was no one left worth fighting for?

"I'm still here."

"I don't _want_ you here." Get out, just get out and go _away_… "Leave me alone, I can't even look at you."

"Lovino-"

"_Get out…" _Get out… Get out… _go away…_

And please, God, someone bring his brother_ back…_

…It turned out to be one of the longest and hardest days of his life. Just hours spent sitting alone with the heat and his angst, because there was no better word for it.

The self-pity and soul-consuming guilt.

The blame he just kept pouring and piling on himself.

By what right had he even let himself get into a relationship like that? He could have friends and he could have his own apartment, he was allowed to go out and dance or visit the beach, he was supposed to send money home for his brothers, and he had an obligation to at least succeed enough that he wasn't a failure. He had to set the bar someplace where his brothers could aim and exceed: not so low that they didn't have to work at it, but he could only push it so high on his own without help.

Coming out didn't have a place in that outline of his life.

Being out wasn't something that would help anyone, not even himself.

Fuck: all he had to do was turn on the god damned television and hear about the hate and the fighting back home.

He didn't even fit the god-damned stereotypes, so making waves would be only that: making waves. There was no appeal for him in slipping into women's clothes, and why would he want to kiss or hold another man who anyone else might mistake for a girl? He had a temper and he swore, but his interest in fashion extended only as deep as "yeah, I'd wear that".

Being out wouldn't change him.

So why the obsession with coming out at all?

It took three paralyzing hours before Feliciano came back, but he couldn't have known that at the first or second ones. He stayed out of the kitchen, refused to touch the gas or the knives: he didn't trust himself. His solution had always been to work at something and distract himself when he was upset, but there was no distraction for this. He'd hurt himself if he let himself near heat or steel.

He knew he'd do it, because his nerves hit him so hard that his own body rebelled against him. He puked pain and sour vomit in his bathroom, and then stood under an ice-cold shower until his head began to ache and his back was numb.

The sun was going down and he hadn't eaten anything all day, sitting in that square living room again with his hands covering his face, his eyes finally dry because he'd run out of energy and tears for crying.

He was numb and his apartment was silent, which was why he heard the footsteps in the corridor before the doorknob even tried to rattle and turn. He knew it was only one person, so that meant it was either Antonio back for round two, or whatever Feliciano had said to their family hadn't brought the mob to his door.

"I- I got lost…!" It was Feliciano, but if his brother hadn't said the words between rough pants, and if he hadn't sounded the way he usually did after doing something stupid, Lovino probably would have kept his head in his hands. Instead he turned slowly to look over the back of the couch at him, and he saw how his brother was absolutely drenched in sweat, panting like he'd just run a mile, and carrying something wide and large in a plastic bag.

"…What happened to your mouth?" And a fat lip. His brother had a fat lip and one side of his face was an angry red colour, too strange for sunburn.

"Oh," Feliciano just dropped whatever he'd bought on the kitchen counter, running his hands under the tap for a few moments either trying to cool them down or wash the city grime off. "Do you know the church up on the hill? The little one with the angel over the door?"

"I know _of_ it, haven't been inside it…" Lovino went to Church with their cousins, and they liked to go to a larger one in their own neighbourhood.

"Don't go there." Why… not? "They're just not a very nice congregation."

Before he could ask what the fuck his brother had gone and gotten himself into, Lovino watched him rifle through a cupboard and pull out the only two bowls he owned. The bowls went on the counter and two spoons followed, and when he untied the knot on the plastic bag Lovino didn't know which way he was supposed to feel when Feliciano pulled out a small bottle of chocolate sauce, then pulled the lid off a quart of ice-cream.

"Don't tell me you punched a priest." The words sort of stumbled out of him, unintentional but necessary as he watched the sweet cream land in the bowls, the dessert already soft and beginning to melt in the heat. The chocolate came down in a liberal stream before his brother picked both up servings in a hurry and raced against the heat to bring the bowls over to the couch.

He gave Lovino the one that looked a little smaller, because he was a... because he just did.

"No, not a priest. I asked him questions though." Questions he didn't repeat now as he sat on the warm tiles on the side of the table next to Lovino. He was spooning the ice cream into his mouth like a greedy treat, but the older brother didn't know how to understand anything right now. "But there was a fight- a small one! Very small."

He said it like Lovino'd begun demanding information from him, because maybe that was what he should have done, but it felt easier to just try and hold his bowl in one hand and manipulate the spoon with the other. It was plain vanilla with chocolate drizzled over top, no special ingredients like fruit or cinnamon, no crushed peanuts like the kinds Lovino usually had his brothers jump on and smash once summer came around and ice-cream became a staple in their household.

But he didn't want to think about Carlino right now.

Because he couldn't handle thinking about his _youngest brother_ right now…

They ate in silence as the sun kept sinking, the red light splashed over his walls as it kept getting darker. Ice cream wasn't much of a meal, Lovino could have made better, and it was hard to eat so much sweet on top of more sweet. Feliciano finished his first, Lovino just kept telling himself all the things he couldn't think about. When he caught sight of his brother glancing back into the kitchen and licking the dip of his spoon, he just reflexively tilted his own bowl around as an offer to share.

Without thinking, Feliciano accepted and stole a spoonful of sweet cream and chocolate.

And then they both just stopped and looked at each other in the dying light, because Lovino had no voice even when he saw the shine start to build and echo the quiet pain stressing his brother's face.

"_I'm sorry…_"

Feliciano hadn't clung to him that hard since their mother died. It was just easier for Lovino to stay sitting on the couch, Feliciano still on the floor, on his knees, arms wrapped up around his waist and face pressed against his chest while Lovino held his head and shoulders, kissing his hair. He moved so fast to get there that it really was just a flash, his spoon hitting the floor just as he wept his first words against Lovino's chest.

"_Your boyfriend's a jerk!_"

"I know, and I'm sorry about that too…"

"_I mean he's a real jerk!" _It wasn't light tears, it wasn't small hiccups or a whimpering voice. Feliciano pushed his face down hard because he wasn't just upset: he was screaming. _"He just shoved you like that and he made you cry and I-!_"

"Feliciano it's settled!"

"_He said you __**hate me!**__"_ His brother unwrapped his arms from around him, but he just clung to his shirt where it was bunched up around Romano's sides instead. He kept his forehead pressed hard to Lovino's ribs, a damp patch telling them both where tears had stained the cloth, but he didn't tell Feliciano to shut up as his voice finally dropped… "Or… that you don't trust me… like you're just putting on an act…"

"Stop it." Stop it, stop- just stop talking. Lovino put his hands on the sides of his brother's face and made him look up at him, but since that felt awkward he just brought a foot up and made the coffee table move back with a clatter over the tiles. He pushed Feliciano back until there was room for him to sink to the floor, but that didn't make his brother let go of him. "He didn't know what he was saying, and what he said was wrong. I trusted you to look after Carlino while I was here in Italy, right?"

"Yes, but-"

"I gave you my car when I left."

"But none of that-"

"I've been working my ass off trying to get money together for your books and shit, do you really think I'd just hand that over if I didn't trust you?" Feliciano didn't raise an argument that time, he just stared at Lovino's chest, sobs still kicking at him and tears trailing weakly from his eyes, highlighting the flush and bruising on his skin.

"I do trust you, Feliciano, but damn it even _you_ had to run off to a church for a few hours…" And get the shit kicked out of him, because Lovino touched the welt around his mouth and watched his brother flinch from the pain. "So what would Nonno say? How would Nonna react?"

Feliciano was quiet as he considered the questions, because for Lovino they were important. His brother had become violent, and he'd raised his voice, and then he'd run off and picked a fight with total strangers. That was how Feliciano had reacted to hearing this, this thing that Antonio had insisted was small but which obviously caused something to short-circuit in his brother's understanding of the world.

He watched Feliciano fight for his own set of answers, and then he watched his face get dark- mouth thinning and brows drawing down over cloudy and exhausted eyes. And he felt Feliciano let go of him with one hand and make a fist.

_POW!_

"_OW!_ What the _fuck!?_" And punch him in the gut! What the hell was that for? "You stupid shit, that hurt!"

"If you _ever_ keep a huge secret like this from me again, Lovino-!"

"_This_ is how you fucking have a heart-to-heart! What kind of fucking poet are you?"

Lovino got back by taking a hand-full of his auburn hair and twisting it until his brother yelled, a glancing punch nicking him in the jaw before they ended up tumbling over on the tile floor, feet kicking and insults hissing. They jostled the table and broke one of his _fucking_ bowls, and with shards of ceramic making the environment too dangerous to roll around on and get hurt, Lovino broke the hold around his neck and turned it into a chance to heft his brother onto the couch, twisting one of his arms around until with a sharp yelp, Feliciano surrendered.

"Enough! Enough! You win! _That hurts!"_

"You scream like those girls you like so much!"

There was food in the fridge and ice in the freezer, but with the sticky mess on his floor and his brother's need to go wash the sweat off his body, Lovino only took out enough ice to cool their bruises before they both agreed that he didn't deserve to have to cook for them after today.

"At least let me clean up the ice cream before we go."

"Leave it, I'm hungry damn it." Hungry, and eager to get out of the tiny space where he'd spent the whole day thinking things he didn't want to remember. "There's a burger joint a few blocks from here, if you're interested."

"If they have French fries then _please…_" French fries and milk-shakes. "And chocolate sundaes?" Of course.

"But you're paying, you stupid shit." Him and his fancy scholarship money. "And not a word about all of this to anyone, understand?"

"I understand."

"Do you promise?"

"I promise: I won't say anything."

"Then I trust you." And he did.

He trusted him.

* * *

**Because it didn't come across as clearly as I wanted it to: Feliciano was arguably more upset about Antonio's behaviour than the fact that his beloved older brother was gay.**

**In Antonio's defence though, if he'd had a stronger relationship with Lovino he probably could have gotten away with a stunt like that. You know, one built off mutual trust and respect where he could stand up and say "I fucked up big in your eyes yes, but only once and ultimately with the best intentions!" Bad 'tonio.**

**Bad Sunny for never writing good 'tonio.**


	10. Ready to Be a Bit More

**Written In The Stars.**

* * *

_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

Ready to Be a Bit More

By the time Feliciano left to go back home and get ready for university life, Lovino had to make a hard decision: could he stay where he was, or not?

Could he stay at the bistro where Antonio still made deliveries three times a week? Could he still stay in an apartment where so much had happened to him all at once?

He could certainly try.

"Are you still mad at me?"

If only Antonio wouldn't make it so difficult.

"I told you: we're finished."

He just didn't seem to get it, he didn't understand how much it had frightened and hurt Lovino to go through all of that. The night Antonio showed up on his doorstep was the first time he slammed the door in his face. He almost threw his cell phone out a window when a week of silence brought a shy text message, then a long and exhausting e-mail that he could barely read because Antonio's grammar in Italian would _forever_ stink worse than the man himself.

He tried to touch him at work. It wasn't a sexual touch, but it was a hand reaching out for his arm to stop him from turning away with a sharp _"put the tomatoes in the back"_. Antonio touched him at work, an infraction which he'd almost convinced himself that the moron understood.

"You're harassing me now _piss off!_"

It led to a fight in the kitchen where he spent too many hours of his day, poisoning an environment he'd grown so comfortable and close in.

And it changed the way that kitchen's dynamics worked when another sous-chef from the line walked in early and stood there stunned by what she'd just heard.

"Uh- I can… go... and come back later."

Lovino almost threw Antonio on his knife. He almost fucking did it.

Instead he went home that night with the book of Italian grammar he'd bought to help himself try and get through the language, and the next day he had Chiara help him fix the grammar in the simple letter he'd drafted for his boss.

"You're quitting the restaurant? Why?"

"Personal issues, but I don't want to burn any bridges." He didn't want to make his co-workers uncomfortable, because the sous-chef he worked next to spent the entire week fidgeting and making awkward mistakes whenever they were placed too close to each other. She wasn't rude, and she'd been there longer than him anyways, but he did make one last effort to keep his job.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm…" She looked like a frightened deer when he caught her between lunch and dinner services getting a quick drink in the back room. She swallowed several mouthfuls of silence and then his heart fell when he watched her grasp repeatedly for the cross hiding under her apron. "I'm sorry, I thought you were such a good person inside but… are you really like _that?_"

He was. He was _like that_ so even when Lovino told her that please, it was a secret, and yes, he was sorry she'd found out, and no, he didn't want to do anything except cook and do well for their restaurant, things didn't work out.

"I'll pray for you." Was about the nicest thing she said to him after that, and then they went back to awkward glances and sloppy errors that got them both in trouble.

By the end of September Lovino finally asked the Head Chef to step aside with him for a moment, and presented the short letter plus an apology for having to leave.

"Are you telling me you don't think I can train you anymore? That's quite presumptuous."

"That's not what I meant at all, sir." Maybe it would be good to get away from that antagonistic attitude his boss always came out with, but again: no burnt bridges. "I'd love to keep working here for another year, maybe two or three, but there are a lot of personal issues getting in the way."

"You mean whatever has come up between you and Valencia?"

"Yes sir…" Not quite a lie, but really not much of the truth. The admission was accepted by his boss with a stern glare and a tone of voice that bordered on lecturing.

"Then I hope you've learned you lesson. Do you have another job yet?"

"No sir, not yet."

"Are you staying in Roma?"

"I'm… not sure." Italy was a very small country, although his cousins would swear and fight him on the issue. He liked Rome, but if he didn't have the money when his rent was due, then he'd have to find a new place anyways. "Sir?"

His boss had the look of someone who was carefully weighing how much he wanted to do something, and in the end he went with it and spoke. The words were dry things, spoken unwillingly as the older man folded his arms over his white chef's jacket and pieced his ideas together.

"Before I came to Rome I worked for the hotel business in Naples. I still have connections there." Naples? The biggest city in Southern Italy, the place his grandparents always talked about because Nonna's family had originally come from the farmland before the city sprawl over-ran it. "I can tell them I know a young chef looking for a job, but it would be up to you to impress them." Had he just called him a… chef?

Not a cook.

"I…"

_Chef._

"Thank you, sir. I would be happy to follow any recommendations you give me."

Unfortunately…

"_YOU SON OF A BITCH YOU DID __**WHAT!?"**_

His cousin Chiara was not-so supportive of the idea.

"Chichi _calm-_" Not even a special meal of all her favourite things at his expense for her family could win her over.

"_**NAPLES!**__ A smelly garbage heap on the sea!_ Did you even _try_ to find a job in Rome first you bastard!?"

"I was going to but-"

"_I HATE YOU DON'T YOU EVER SPEAK TO ME AGAIN."_

She did end up speaking to him again, but it took a lot of chocolate gifts and a vow to let her come stay with him when the new fashion season hit, and even then it was more like she was just willing to acknowledge his existence again. By the time he'd tracked down a new apartment and was ready to leave Rome behind, Chiara _finally_ came around with a clinging hug and a departing kiss on each cheek.

"If you need anything then you tell us, you understand?"

"Yes, Chichi."

"I mean it: if you're hungry and you need us to send you food or something-"

"I'm a chef, Chichi, I think I can-"

"_THAT'S NOT THE POINT._"

It wasn't the point, the point was that his family was happy for him. The point was that they didn't have to all come down to the train station with him on the day he left, but they did. And his Nonna hadn't had to go through the trouble from back home to try contacting what few strains of the her family line were still in and around Naples, but she did: it wasn't like his arrival in Rome with the kisses and cheek pinching, but there was a something-like-an-uncle there in Naples to pick him up and give him a place to stay for his first night in the South, someone who helped him find the bank, post office, local shops and of course his actual apartment. Lovino figured the rest out on his own, and three days later he was working again.

The bistro's kitchen had been a small, cramped environment with an eclectic collection of old broilers and stainless steel ranges with that damned sanitizer rusting and coughing in the back. The kitchen in the belly of the four story complex he worked in now was all steel, and staffed by twenty people on three rotating shifts.

Of course, Lovino took a spot on the night shift: cleaning every inch of counter-space and grilling edge, crippling his hands with enough prepped vegetables to feed an army, and helping put together the larger, heavier meals that needed several hours to stew and broil away in the ovens for hours on end. He worked making stocks and broths with bones charred in the ovens, flavoured with vegetables forced to sweat out their oils in baking pans before being tossed in the boiling water.

They made the hotel's pasta for the day, they started the bases for the heavy sauces so they'd be reduced and ready for the fresh ingredients to get tossed in and mellow with the flavours without over-cooking. It wasn't just grunt labour: it was skilled labour. Wash it, chop it, stick it in a pot: but then watch that fucker and taste it every ten to fifteen minutes to make sure the spices were evening out properly.

After being hired Lovino rarely saw the Executive Chef himself, it was only for a few minutes at the end of his shift when the man arrived to formally start the hotel's day. Although there were some whispers about him, he knew food, and he expected his staff to know too.

He'd learned about butchery and cutting meats in school, but he knew his way around a vegetable garden better than a carcass: the hotel changed that. They had sixty rooms over their heads and street access for the hungry tourists wandering Naples, so it was part of the night-crew's job to make sure there was enough protein carved, cleaned, de-boned and ready to feed absolutely anyone who came in and took a seat.

It took him two months from October to December before he got off the night-shift.

He got off the night shift because he got himself noticed twice.

Once for making a critical mistake.

"You've ruined it, you _idiot!_"

And then one more time by getting caught trying to fix it.

"What are you doing here?"

"Uh- I'm… cooking?"

Christmas was an active time for the hotel business, which meant despite Chiara screaming herself blue in the face over the fact that he was staying in Naples for the holidays, Lovino was also working on Christmas Day. It was a half-day at least, a skeleton crew working the morning shift so everyone else could be home with their families and attend church services. Lovino didn't have any family to go with, and he'd felt himself slipping here and there with his church-going without his cousins around to keep him in line anyways. When he found himself with a free morning after a relatively peaceful shift on Christmas Eve (The Eve of Christmas Eve had been the killer, the one after was easy), Lovino decided to take advantage of what he knew would be a large, empty kitchen and his own grocery bag of ingredients.

Earlier that week he'd burnt himself, the stock, the chicken he'd been poaching, and created an awful mess all over the stove he'd then had to shut off and clean. It had been his first time trying the complicated recipe and he'd fucked it up.

Lovino could handle being a fuck-up in general, that was just who he was. Where he drew the line was fuck-ups in the kitchen: he was better than that.

In Rome he'd lived in a small apartment that had one main sitting-living-kitchen room, a bathroom with a shower stall instead of a tub, and a walled off area that worked as a bedroom but only had a curtain instead of a door. His neighbourhood had been questionable, but historic, and as long as he'd stayed off certain streets and avoided doing certain things in plain sight, he'd been fine.

In Naples his pay was better, so his apartment was nicer to match it. His neighbourhood was still a little off, but he was able to afford a studio flat with a modern vibe and massive windows that let the light in at too-early in the morning. He shared his bath and laundry rooms with a young couple on the same floor who occupied the other side of the building, but his kitchen was still entirely too small for the kinds of recipes and techniques he wanted to try.

So he'd bought the ingredients he needed to try again, pilfering his own spice rack for the extras and additives that would suit his pallet instead of forever bowing to the Executive Chef's whims. With his ID badge and keys in hand, he slid into the hotel from the back door, snagged a spare apron from the back-room to keep himself from turning into a mess, and turned on only enough lights and burners to work by.

The stock was roaring away in the same _fucking_ pot just on principle, and Lovino had just finished stuffing the stupid bird with a different blend of spices and grains than the one his boss and the hotel demanded. He understood the restrictions: it had been the same thing at the bistro and that restaurant back home too. People came to a restaurant looking for a particular flavour, texture, and execution to the meals they liked, they didn't want something different every time they walked in the door and got ready to pay.

But it was his fucking chicken, he'd bought the damned thing and Lovino-fucking-Vargas did not like having that much cinnamon and tarragon stuffed down his throat, thank you.

"I can see that, but why are you _here?_"

It wasn't his boss who caught him- the chef who ran the night crew and kept them busy and on their toes doing everything the hotel could possibly need done. It was the _Executive_ Chef who caught him, with a butcher's needle in his hand and the heavy thread stitching the bird shut so he could get ready to ease it into the pot.

"Uuuh…" He was very eloquent when put on the spot, which was why the heavy-set man with the laptop bag on his hip was able to not only put his case down on one of the steel tables, but he actually made it all the way over to the patch of light where Lovino was working before he could choke on an excuse. "My kitchen's… too… small…?"

"Where did you get these ingredients?" He'd bought them that morning. "Do you have a receipt?" Hell yes, and as soon as he could get his hands under soap and hot water, Lovino quickly rifled through the shopping bag to find it. "You're Lovino, right? From the night shift?"

Of course he knew who Lovino was, or at least knew enough that he stuck out like a sore thumb in the kitchen. It wasn't hard to explain the situation: that he'd messed up the technique the first time and been banished from the station without a chance to try again. He was here to learn, so if he was the one who had to throw fifty euros at a grocer to get the job done, he'd do it.

Lovino almost crawled into the oven when his boss's boss decided to test the flavours in the pot. His hands started shaking like mad when he was told, without a speck of judgement on the stock, to carefully lower the bird into the broth and let it boil. He then had to sit there in the dark kitchen under the only god-damned light he'd turned on, and explain how he'd broken in and commandeered the kitchen's appliances without permission, hours before they were supposed to be there for evening prep.

"But then why are _you_ here?"

He almost bit his tongue, and then he almost convinced himself that a grown man really _could_ fit inside the oven.

His boss's boss just laughed at him and then sent Lovino on an errand to get them both a coffee from across the street. By the time he got back the rest of the lights were on and the Executive Chef was busy working on something near Lovino's frothing pot, his white chef's jacket glowing under the glare.

"Ideally it should boil for another hour, but I want you to strain it now instead." So Lovino did exactly that, separating the over-cooked vegetables and meat from the dark broth swirling in a fresh pot. He then pulled all the grey flesh off the bird and that with the rice and spices was left on a large dish for later.

Some of that chicken was mixed with a light dressing and served as a sandwich. It was also shredded and added back into the broth for a soup, boiled up again with enough cream to thicken it before fresh carrots and other vegetables were delicately tossed in to cook part-way, keeping their flavour and texture in the mixture.

After three hours of cooking there were several fully prepared meals worked out of a single bag of ingredients, and Lovino was placed on the afternoon shift.

Afternoon, otherwise known as:

Dinner.

* * *

**This fic is getting so long, I don't know how to control it.**

**I have all these Prumano scenes I want to write on top of everything else, and Gil isn't even HERE YET.**

**Foodie FYI: whatever Romano was trying to make got massively confused between deep-frying a chicken and making a fancy chicken soup, I have no idea what he did wrong the first time, so he was probably just so damned embarrassed for fucking up a soup that he went back to try again. _Yeah…_**


	11. One Overconfident Motherfucker

**Listen to Your Heart, Starlight, Illuminated.**

**I've given up trying to track how many chapters this thing will be, because look we're on chapter 11 and THERE'S NO GIL YET.**

**Check out the new reading features though, I wish they worked on my phone!**

* * *

_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

One Overconfident Motherfucker

Naples was a new experience for Lovino, because it took the isolation of his apartment in Rome and changed it. He wasn't isolated anymore: he was just free.

Even in Rome there had always been the possibility of Chiara showing up on his doorstep with food or her keys telling him to get his shit together so they could go out. He'd been called up unexpectedly by Marcello's family several times on Sundays if he was running late for church or if he had time to volunteer somewhere that wasn't the bistro.

In Naples none of that applied. He still called home, but he called less often, and the rest of his time was his.

Completely his.

Wholly and unequivocally his.

And if Naples didn't work out for him then he could always move again: he could go to Milan or Palermo. He could visit Sardinia or work somewhere near Florence.

Because he was given a trial run for a week on the dinner service at his job in downtown Naples, and a month later as a 22nd birthday gift to himself, he earned a permanent spot there working night after night at stations where all the prep-work he'd slaved away at for months before was actually combined and served for hungry patrons.

His hours eased up slightly and his pay increased.

He retired his old knives from Nonna and left them at home for personal cooking, buying a professional-grade set this time that remained sharper longer and stopped wearing away at the tips.

When the spring menu came around Lovino competed with his co-workers and he won the Executive Chef's approval, landing one of his own creations on the restaurant's service list.

And on the day when they knew one of Naples' harshest food critics would be coming in to dine, Lovino got there early and swung by the front of house to speak with the wait staff.

"How do you think tonight's gonna go?" Not officially, he wasn't their boss or anywhere near a position of authority, but Lovino had made a point of at least getting to know the people who worked on the other side of the service wall. The restaurant espoused cohesion and communication between kitchen and dining room, and now that he wasn't slaving away in the wee hours of the morning when there was only a grumpy skeleton crew to speak to, he was comfortable coming up in street clothes to talk to the bartender for a few minutes.

"His review will make or break us for summer, so you guys had better have your shit together." Well _thanks_, dip-shit. Lovino didn't even know what he looked like!

"Something important happening tonight?" Lovino didn't expect the man sitting at the bar to cut into the conversation, but both he and the server looked over at the hotel guest relaxing with a wide glass of red wine in his hand. Lovino expected the bartender to do his job and handle the small-talk, but the guy was too busy noticing another guest and quickly fetching another drink, leaving Lovino to handle it instead.

"Everybody who works down here is on their toes tonight: some fancy critic is coming in." Speaking of fancy, that was probably the word for the person he was speaking to. A blond with a long face, skin lightly tanned despite the cold weather only starting to ease up outside. He was wearing tinted glasses over his eyes, the kind that designers put out for more money than Lovino could justify on accessories. A white suit jacket and slacks made him stick out almost as much as the pink scarf wrapped over his shoulder.

"It's salmon." Fuck him it was fucking _pink._ "But while we're on the subject: what do you recommend on the dinner menu? Unless you're part of the cleaning staff, in which case, nevermind..." Oh fuck _him._

"A cheese-plate to go with your wine." The joke didn't translate into Italian, but if he'd said it in English Lovino would have thought himself clever.

"How _continental._"

"Italy is part of the fucking continent, do you need a map?" So he went for being an asshole instead.

"A map to the concierge's desk so I can complain about the rude janitor at the bar?"

"Call me a janitor one more time and I'll wash that mouth out with soap."

"When I'd much rather have a glass of wine and something delicious in front of me." He already had a glass of wine and he'd turned his stool around so he was facing- _that rotten shit!_

"Fine," Lovino huffed, giving the man what he wanted because he'd obviously lost the exchange. "If you want a fail-safe tonight then order the stuffed manicotti!" The executive chef Santiago had been working on the combination all week waiting for this service, if every plate of it wasn't absolutely _perfect_ tonight, then someone was liable to get fired.

"Is that what you would order?" No. "Then again: what do you recommend?" Oh for fuck's sake, as if the bastard really needed to smile like that as he sipped his wine again- who the hell wore gloves inside anyways?

"Get the burger then, and don't fucking complain!"

"They have a hamburger here?" That _actually_ sounded like a genuine question.

"Yes! It's new and it's what I would get." Even with the modifications they as a team had come up with for the burger, the core recipe was Lovino's. He would have been shooting himself in the foot if he didn't push it when he could. "Garlic aioli and a light avocado butter on a toasted bun, the onions are sautéed in a sweet balsamic vinegar and the burger itself is cooked on the grill we use for the roasted vegetables."

"Avacado butter could hardly be considered _light._"

"Order it and see for yourself, now if you'll _excuse me_, princess."

He left the guest with his wine and his hair so light it had to have been bleached, getting into the kitchen ahead of time for his shift and changing into his uniform. When the morning crew began shutting down their stations for the one hour transition period, Lovino was there to scrape and scrub his station back to a pristine shine, taking several trips back to the freezer and checking the ovens and resting trays for the ingredients he'd need for the service tonight. He only really had to check for his station specifically, but went to all the others because he was so early that there was no one to tell him not to.

Then he went back to his own slab of counter space and began prepping the fresh vegetables he'd need: fresh parsley and green onion, chopped oregano and other light greens that couldn't be left sitting out hour after hour waiting for someone to use them. The rest of the staff came in on time and settled into the light rhythm of knife-work and pan-clashing, the kitchen waking back up after its brief late-afternoon nap.

Six to eleven, that was the dinner service.

"I want precision and diligence. I want this service to sing: no mistakes, no errors. If you catch yourself going into the weeds- speak up! Get help! We're a crew and I won't let us sink! This is your summer bonus, people!"

"_Yes chef!"_

The drum-roll of knives and waiting hiss of butter melting down was just the engine getting started, because when the first ticket from the first table hit the pass from the server's hand, Santiago's loud voice sent them off like a shot:

"_Starters!_ _Table four two soup, one salad! Table seven-"_

And that was it, five hours with only a few minutes to sit and grab some water, a marathon of shouting orders and handling ingredients. It was the precision of the kind of prep work he'd suffered through combined with the power of watching the ingredients in his pan ignite over the gas or meld into each other in a sizzling skillet.

"_Two minutes on the beef!"_

"_Table six: another shrimp starter!"_

"_Scallops are ready!"_

It was listening _and_ speaking because when Lovino heard the chef on the fish station say something was wrong and a serving of cod needed to go back in the oven, that meant from where he was on dressings the sauce to go with that entre had to go down on low heat so it didn't go cold waiting for the meat to hit the plate. You couldn't serve cold sauce on hot fish, and whipped ingredients would collapse if they were left sitting for ten minutes waiting for the rest of the meal to come together.

In a large kitchen like this one there was no plating done at individual stations. The steak was seared at one station and the salad came together in another, vegetables steamed and boiled and pureed before being delivered quickly and efficiently into the Executive Chef's hands: _he_ plated _everything_ for the customers_._

And he tasted everything too, triple-checking what his staff were expected to have already double-checked before bringing it up.

"Here it is, people! The golden ticket!" it was a command to stop and listen for a moment, skillets angled off the heat and knives paused after a quick slice. "He must have brought a friend tonight: one manicotti, one burger- _I want perfection!_"

"_Yes chef!_"

That special order didn't blend into the cascade of tickets and plates: it was too important. When it was complete and sent on its way, then the kitchen regained its pace, the rhythm thrown off by the care necessary to produce a flawless plate before going back to the comfortable steam of bangs and sears.

Their boss's right hand man stepped up to the pass, the long counter between dining room and kitchen, when the Executive Chef himself went out to shake hands and schmooze with the critic. Lovino barely noticed the switch off because he was too focused keeping the first round of caramel glaze in his pot from burning for the dessert orders creeping in, but that changed very quickly.

"_VARGAS!"_

Oh-

-fuck!

"Caramel's burnt- five minutes to-"

"_**VARGAS!"**_

"I got it for you- _go_."

The bastard working the vegetables next to him swooped in with the fresh sugar and cream, Lovino unwilling to leave and go running to his death in the middle of a service. The fact that the cook who'd been there longer than him looked like he'd just seen a ghost didn't make him feel any better.

"Yes chef!" He moved fast on his feet around the edge of the kitchen, avoiding getting in anyone's way as the engine kept roaring and clanging around him. When he got to the door that led from the kitchen out into the calm dining room, he found his boss standing there with something like murder in his dark eyes.

"Uuuh, chef?" All he got was a stare and a finger-crook that made Nonna's rolling pin seem like a joke.

"_Follow._" Why was he in trouble? What the hell had he done?

His boss didn't tell him what was wrong, didn't say a word as he was led with a forced smile out of the kitchen with his apron still on and face sweating equal parts from the heat he'd just left behind and the nerves nipping at his heels like dogs.

Lovino really wished he could have been surprised when he saw a bleach-blond peacock in a white suit sitting at a table near the centre of the dining room, but truth be told his smile just froze on his face and he hated everything.

He hated everything from the ambient light blocking the daylight from filtering inside, he hated the faux marble he'd just traipsed over to get here. The velvet table clothes and fresh glass of red wine were an insult to him because they were all so fucking _pristine_ and he was about to get thrown out on his ass.

There were two barely-touched meals in front of the stuffed peacock and his long, horse-ish face declared that he was bored, gloved fingers slowly slowly tilting his wine this way and that against the candle light flickering from the middle of the table.

One plate, of course, was the manicotti: the rolls of pasta stuffed with carefully selected ingredients blended and cooked together with frightening intensity, drizzled with a refined sauce and sprinkled with only just enough cheese to improve the texture.

The other was Lovino's shitty excuse of a hamburger, carved down the middle and with a sliver missing instead of a proper bite.

"Signore, this is the young chef I mentioned to you."

"Oh?" How dare he sound so fucking bored when Lovino was standing there eating his words about moving from Naples to Florence. Two jobs in two years was a shitty track record for him to take home. "And here I thought he was a janitor."

Smile, Lovino.

Smile and don't say a fucking word.

"Come now, you were so chatty before. Don't you have a name?" He was going to choke.

"Vargas, sir. Lovino Vargas." He could feel himself being blacklisted from every restaurant in Naples, but he grinned his way through his own name and then watched the critic lift his wine against the light, one eye closed behind his stupid glasses.

"Chef Vargas," _don't mock him!_ "Do you know what the great crime is about serving an American meal in an Italian restaurant?"

"No sir."

"It simply doesn't go with any of the _wine…_" And with that graceful comment, the critic up-ended the wine in his glass over the pasta dish in front of him, earning a painful hiss from the Executive chef before the criticism followed.

"My dear Santiago, we've had this discussion before: your dishes lack acid. Yes, I see the tomatoes you've carefully strewn about, but lemon and crab is such a classically boring combination that I'm not impressed at all. Yes, yes, I taste the basil, and the quality of your ingredients is exquisite as always, but the execution is _dull._"

Watching his boss and mentor fall several pegs was terrifying enough, but Lovino actually shifted one foot back in an effort to _run away_ when he saw those shaded eyes land on his dish next.

"And one of you is to blame for what happened here. I was promised onions braised in vinegar but all I taste is olive oil and garlic, which is rude when paired with a curiously _light_ avocado butter that I _would_ be inclined to praise if it were not paired with those same onions and left my entire pallet reeking of garlic."

"_Oh my god…"_

Lovino didn't mean to say it because he didn't mean to draw attention to himself, but he was actually too scared by what his boss was going to do to him to get away from the realization. He'd described the wrong recipe.

And now the critic was _looking_ at him directly, and before Lovino could get through the moment he heard an accented voice hit him in _English_ with:

"I'll have you know that I've been to America several times before. I frequently fly to Los Angeles and am no stranger to several cities along the east coast. You're an American, I can hear it when you speak, why on earth would you tell me one thing and then serve something else?"

"There was a mistake-"

"I can _taste_ that."

"Will you just let me finish?" Oh, fuck his temper, but his boss's thick face was already white with rage and Lovino could feel the ten tonne weight dangling over his head and getting ready to drop. "The recipe is new here on the menu and it was changed to suit the hotel's tastes. What I described to you earlier was the original version which was work-shopped by the kitchen staff to improve the flavour."

"While completely robbing _me_ of a worthwhile meal." Lovino didn't speak one way or the other on the issue, he didn't know how to make a statement without putting himself in deeper trouble.

"And so you've completely tarnished the reputation of this restaurant." W-What!? Lovino turned around so fast he almost snapped his own neck, instantly pegged with the firm, disgracing stare from the senior chef.

He'd never seen him make a face like that before. Santiago was a heavy man, salt-and-pepper black hair and discoloured blotches on his thick face like scars. He had incredibly dark eyes and a small nose like a button between his cheeks, and Lovino had only ever seen him laughing or smiling before now, or maybe at his worst calling up a bellowing voice to shake the kitchen when he needed his staff's attention.

Now he looked _pissed_.

"Sir, I-"

"Embarrassing me and this entire service- what do you have to say for yourself?"

"I-I'm sorry!" No! He hadn't done this, it couldn't have all been his fault! "It was a slip of the tongue, I didn't even know who he-"

"Excuses, that's all I'm hearing." No, he wasn't actually going to fire him for this? _Onions!?_ "Go clean up and get out, you're finished here today. We'll discuss this tomorrow." At least he was giving him tomorrow, but that didn't change the fact that-!

"I.. I just…" He just had to nod and excuse himself, because trying to plead his case, he knew, would only land Lovino in an even deeper world of hurt.

He turned around and left the dining room, ears ringing, and he just didn't understand how the day had fallen apart around him. Onions. Onions of all things had been his undoing, and they hadn't even been prepared at his station.

"Vargas?" And oh god, the poor bastard was still covering Lovino's part of the kitchen for him, and he hadn't come back to relieve him of the extra burdens. In fact, he'd hoped to just shoot through the kitchen to the backroom unassaulted: how was he supposed to explain what had just happened? Was it even his job?

"Chef kicked me off service, I'm sorry."

He flinched and then fled down the isolating white corridor behind the kitchen. The apology carried his fuck-up over to everyone else in the kitchen. He had to force himself to just ignore the voices that asked what had happened, or demanded that he get the fuck back there so they could see him and get their answers.

The change-room was cramped and glaring under florescent lamps, only a few moments quiet letting him strip off his cook's coat and apron like they were poisoned. His own shirt was only half-buttoned before he got his jacket on, keys, phone and other valuables ripped from the little locker that demanded his name badge in exchange for the personal effects.

He took the fire exit to escape when he heard Executive Chef Santiago's voice booming in the kitchen again, fleeing into the warm spring light and noise of the Neapolitan downtown. Anything to escape hearing his name shouted again.

Once outside, Lovino could just-

Or maybe he would…

The way the service door rattled shut like dry bones held something very final about it. Lovino couldn't remember if it was one of those one-way locking doors that would only open from the inside, but it didn't matter. What mattered was this feeling.

He'd never had this feeling before. He didn't know what to call it or how to cope. He was just so stunned that nothing was registering for him.

And then suddenly it all did.

He'd just been thrown off his job. His _job._

His career.

His whole reason for being here in Naples, for leaving his brothers behind so he could come to Italy.

One part of Lovino's mind jumped to the rescue and berated him for the panic he could feel washing over him. Straighten the fuck up: this was not the end of the world. He hadn't been fired! And even if he was told tomorrow to go fuck off, then that was exactly what Lovino would do! He'd fuck off to another part of Italy, or stay in Naples if he liked it so fucking much, and find another god-damned job in a country that was fucking obsessed with food!

That one angry, spunk part of Lovino's brain had a lot to say that was all going to make him feel better later, but right now there was so much more to deal with and it was all crashing down on him: if he was taken off the dinner service here, or, god forbid, fired from the Empress all together, then that would follow him for the remainder of his time in Italy.

His first real opportunity to work in the heat and the rush, blown over by a garnish he hadn't even prepared. Lovino had slaved away for years cleaning and prepping for the kind of cooking he'd been given three precious months to sink his teeth into, and if he was fired now it would tell his next employer what a fuck up Lovino really was to have around.

A fuck-up with the only thing he still really _wanted_ for himself, the only thing he'd kept letting himself dream of having…

His mind hit the fever-pitch of _"I'm still learning", "it's just a hiccup", "this has nothing to do with skills it's just work-place politics!"_ but it didn't matter. Until he could calm himself down, the damage was done.

Lovino had to escape the sight and stink of the hotel's refuse where it was piled up in the alleyway. Walknig would ease the rotting pain in his lungs and force him to breathe again, and navigating the city streets would save him from the rest of his corrupting thoughts.

At least that was the idea.

He wasn't allowed to think of where he was going or what would happen when he got home, because the only thing he knew right now was that he couldn't handle being isolated when he felt like this. Isolated. Alone.

Not Free in Naples.

Alone in Napes.

'_Stop it…'_ Don't think about it! Don't think about it! Don't even stop to recall any of it- not the distance between here and home, not the time difference between his life and his family, not the costs of going home or the expense of losing his career-_ stop it!_

Barrelling into a random person on the sidewalk was not the plan Lovino's fevered mind had intended. Maybe it was a kind angel pulling strings to give him a distraction.

"Ah, there you are."

But when he recognized first the voice, then the suit, and then the painfully bleached _hair_ of the person he'd just hit, Lovino realized that angel was a grade-A dick.

And that dick's name was Flavio De Rossa.

* * *

**Flavio is a 2P!Romano design created by Jujunghe on Tumblr! I've thrown my drafts out the window and wanted to write something with him, so here he is!**

**Leave a comment below? I'll see you again soon with the next update!**


	12. Simply Exquisite (Romacest)

**Good Life, Maria Maria.**

**For longer than foreeeeeverrr, that's how long this fic will beee!**

* * *

_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

Simply Exquisite

Lovino tried running away. That was how he wanted to cope with the stress of being torn down by his boss and kicked out on the street for an evening of sorrow and self-pity. When he stumbled into the spring sunlight over Naples and rammed into the food critic who was the _reason_ Lovino had been thrown out, he tried running away.

The man with the bleached hair and pink scarf snagged him by the sleeve and had another hand on his collar before Lovino so much as turned around.

"A-a-ah~ What a flighty creature you are." He did _not_ need to be talked down to today, Lovino had put up with enough shit already that he simply couldn't stand it.

"Get your hands off me." He swiped them both off, stopping long enough to glare at the smile he shot down as a fake peace offering.

He tried walking away again, and the bastard grabbed him _again_.

"How rude!"

"Says you! _Let go!_"

"That would be-" The blonde's reply was too academic for Lovino's Italian to keep up with. And academic was the flattering word, a more appropriate one was _stuffy._ "What a beastly temper you have, aren't you at least going to ask why I keep stopping you?"

"If it's to gloat about how you just got me fired then I'm warning you right now: I will punch you."

The man laughed, he had that kind of deep-in-his-chest flutter that made him croon like a pigeon searching for breadcrumbs. They were nearly the same height with Lovino edging him out by less than an inch, refusing to acknowledge the poof to his blond mop of hair that might have made them equals. With his white suit and flashy sunglasses shading dark eyes, he was impossible to ignore and clearly didn't understand the word _subtle._ But his presence, for all the strutting and primping, felt lacking.

"My _dear_," Lovino was going to punch him for daring to roll his eyes like that. "If you knew our lovely friend Santiago half as well as I do then you wouldn't even concern yourself with such things." What a fucking _mouthful!_ "You should have heard the simply _devilish_ things he was saying before I asked to see you." The way he breathed the word _'devilish'_ over his tongue suddenly made Lovino uncomfortable.

"What the hell are you talking about?" He was a line-cook who'd received a fast promotion and then fucked it up, he really didn't need attention like this right now, not after what he'd just gone through.

"Something best discussed in the shade, don't you think?"

It wasn't even that hot out, but Lovino found himself being uncomfortably led down the street and around a small corner. The street bent and twisted through tall buildings and squat structures, a hidden residential borough blossoming from the exhaust of the downtown core before a café of red bricks and cracked plaster walls unearthed itself from under the asphalt and power lines.

The peacock finally gave his name: Flavio De Rossa, but refused to answer Lovino's god-damned question about what his boss had said until they were ushered inside. The owner knew the critic, kisses were given and somehow Lovino's name was thrown out despite him wanting no part of the exchange.

After Flavio had the stem of a wine-glass placed in his gloved hand and Lovino was sitting stiffly in front of him with an unwanted array of wine testers to sample, _then_ the conversation finally resumed.

"Stop evading." One area of cooking Lovino arguably hadn't put that much effort into was wines. He knew a few cooking wines and understood what they could do to elevate a dish, but actually building a pallet for them had stalled once he found a few he liked and felt comfortable paying for. "And quit it with the pet-names, it's annoying."

"As you wish: your beloved boss only tore you to pieces like that because he was embarrassed." Being called a scape-goat to his face was not helping Lovino feel better about himself. "He'd spent the previous ten minutes telling me about this _marvelous_ young chef from America, fresh from a year spent training in Rome and with the most exquisite, if still unrefined, sense of taste and flavour."

Lovino choked on his red.

"…That's bullshit." His boss would never say shit like that.

"Is this the face of deception?" Yes. Flavio closed his eyes and put on an offended face, tsking softly and looking away. "You wound me," he breathed, drama soaking his expression the way the sun was glorifying that white jacket.

"That makes you delicate."

"Then won't you treat me gently?"

"Try asking a pastry chef instead." Lord knew Lovino didn't have the hands for light cakes and fragile constructions. He was better with knives and heavy pans, and in an effort to get away from that condescending smile Lovino looked out the bubbled glass of the café window and sipped the same red again, trying to figure out if he liked the acid washing over his tongue or not.

When he looked back at Flavio because he hadn't heard a rebuttal, the bleach-blond was giving him a harsh look.

"What?"

"You're doing it wrong."

"Doing what? I'm drinking wine."

"And _you're doing it wrong._"

Lovino put the small cylindrical glass down: he hadn't been served a wine-glass, but a series of small tumblers on a wooden tray with cards telling him the names and origins of each of the wines. Sitting back in his chair with one leg hooked over the other, he didn't even say anything: just tossed a hand in the air telling Flavio to do as he pleased.

"Show me then." Asshole.

"I _will._" Complete _definition_ of the word.

They spent another hour at that little table by the window, Flavio walking him through the over-complicated and elaborate dance of wine tasting. Start at this end not that one and progress through the wines. Don't drink all of it, just _taste_ this, _sample_ that, _sniff_ like this, but don't _breathe_ over the blah-blah-blaaaah…

"For fuck's sake it's sour grapes."

"I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that."

"_Sour grapes._"

And then it was another fifteen minutes of heated debate, back and forth with barely a moment to stop and think. Attack, retreat, defend, counter, _attack_- over and over again until Lovino wasn't sure if he was getting drunk off the wine or the adrenaline.

"But you have to distinguish: veal or lamb, you can't throw them together like that."

Or maybe it was that subtle hit of something else when sitting in the sun for so long caused Flavio to finally shed his white jacket. It wasn't cologne because Lovino would have picked up on that sooner, or maybe the peacock just knew how to put it on properly so he wasn't doused in the scent.

At some point a tray of fresh bread and assorted cheeses was dropped off at their table, a distraction that only calmed the discussion, didn't stop the constant dance of two culinary minds circling around one another and watching.

"You didn't just peel the crust off that." Watching, and jabbing whenever an opening presented itself.

"I have my preferences." And apparently bread crust was not one of them. Lovino stared.

"And your sins: put that in your mouth or so help me."

"So help you what? Are you going to force-feed it to me?" That wasn't such a bad idea, but instead of making the threat it just sent them spiralling into a debate about specialty breads and layers of flavour and texture.

They were politely kicked out at closing time, and because Flavio only carried cards Lovino gave him half the cost of their stay in cash so the shorter man could pay the full amount.

Lovino wasn't sure if either of them was _drunk,_ but several hours of steady drinking and the total amount on the bill told him he was at least very, very tipsy.

But it was a good tipsy, the kind of feeling in his limbs and warmth in his gut that told him he was floating, that fooled his limbs into thinking he wanted to dance. Adrenaline and alcohol and the steady hammer of a heart spurred by conversation and wine- suddenly he wanted music.

"Are you alright?" Maybe he _was_ drunk, but Lovino's stress levels were so low that he didn't even care.

"I don't think I've danced since I left Rome." Naples had been about spending the day out doing things and the nights in kitchens cooking and learning. "Maybe I'll find a club…" Work and sleep and work and sleep and practice and work: no cousins to drag him out to church or down to the beach, no little brothers to keep him distracted from the grind of cutting vegetables and searing meats.

"You don't dance in a club." Flavio tripped after saying the words, and Lovino caught him by one arm and laughed at him for being careless. "Clubs are sweaty…"

"Fine," somehow he wound up holding Flavio's hand instead of his arm. Somehow they wound up facing each other, circling each other with footsteps instead of words. "Where do you dance?"

"I'll show you." Or maybe a few words, but mostly footsteps. Graceless, heavy things interrupted by memories of wine and confused by street lights and the whine of traffic on the other side of crumbled buildings. Clasped hands raised and somehow palms on waists with hips swinging out of tune with silent music.

"This is so stupid." Lovino was drunk.

"Where are we?" But Flavio was drunk too.

"Are you gay?" So Lovino ruined a good evening with a stupid question.

"No," and he wasn't even that upset with Flavio's answer. "I don't discriminate, why?" There was nothing to be upset about.

"M' not drunk enough for this." Not drunk enough to repeat a flirt he remembered had been used on him once before. Not drunk enough to just kiss someone he'd been borderline disgusted by twelve hours earlier. "But your cologne's got mint and something sweet like chamomile in it, 'nd you've got cranberry on your breath from the rosé…" The pink wine… Red was classic and refined, but he'd had three glasses of the pink…

It was Lovino's turn to stumble because he'd forgotten they were dancing, and oh how close it almost brought their faces before he groaned inside and pulled back. Another memory kicked at him through the lovely floating haze: no kisses while drunk, not like that again…

"Do you _like_ m-en?" Flavio's voice didn't slur, he was too fucking prissy to _slur, _but he jumped into English as their feet stumbled to a stop, and the way they jostled each other and forgot what to do with arms and hands made the _men_ sound like a _me_.

Just a stupid trick of the wine.

"_Yes._" He was drunk and floating and a little bit lost, but not confused for once, which was a nice change. Tipping a little with the dizzy feeling led to hands holding him by his jacket before he could tumble back on the side-walk, "I like men."

"I like food." Food was good too. Lovino liked food, but even he couldn't cook if he was drunk and tired: one or the other, but not both. "I'm hungry."

"Me too." They were hungry and they liked food, and that was worth more than being drunk and being really close, because it wasn't the right kind of close. Bread and cheese and wine made them hungry and that meant they couldn't dance in the almost silence anymore, because food meant walking to where it was.

It was almost two in the morning before Lovino finally wound up back home in his apartment, full of seafood pasta and another shared bottle of white wine. If his neighbours thought it was weird that he came home singing, then they just had to accept the fact that their floor-mate hadn't come home alone either.

As it turned out: Flavio was a remarkable singer too.

"A-_hem._"

"Oh god, shut up…"

It also turned out that they were both cranky shits when it came to their joint hang-over the next morning.

"I blame you for this."

"_Bullshit_." Because Lovino's head was absolutely pounding, and despite doing nothing more than drinking too much and passing out fully clothed on Lovino's bed, Flavio looked like someone had dragged his prissy gouda ass through the gutter.

"It's _Gucci._" _What-ev-er. "_Nowwill you at least tell me what street this is so I can go home?"

Eventually Flavio found himself in a taxi that took his miserable ass home. Somehow Lovino found himself in the shower, and he managed to raise his spirits dramatically by praising himself for neither kissing nor fucking the stuffy blond while under the influence of the wine.

He also didn't get fired at work when he sheepishly showed up later that afternoon.

And he wasn't kicked off service.

And the only person who gave him shit in the kitchen over it was told to shut up by one of the senior cooks. Flavio had been right: Lovino had only taken the fall because their boss had been humiliated, it could have just as easily been any of them taking the lash for the team.

So in the end it was actually a really good day for him, and the only hiccup came when a member of the hotel staff came and found him just before the end of his shift in the kitchen, telling him there was a call from the front desk.

The call was actually a bleach-blond peacock standing in the lobby mercilessly tapping one designer shoe on the yellow marble floor, a sky-blue suit replacing the white one from the night before.

"My phone." Was all he said, and he didn't even bother trying to smile.

"What about it?"

"I can't _find_ it." Well shit, that wasn't Lovino's fault!

But Flavio wasn't accusing him of stealing it, which calmed the conversation considerably because once that was cleared up then Lovino wasn't in the mood to get into a tiff at the end of a good day.

"I've retraced my steps completely since yesterday. It's not here in the hotel, at the café where we had our little talk, or the restaurant where we dined." Okay, that made sense. "The only other place it could reasonably be found is-"

"Oi, Flavio, I said it's fine." His interruption made the eyes behind those tinted lenses widen a little, like maybe he was confused that Lovino wasn't trying to jump down his throat. There was a time and place for sword-fighting… "Just let me get changed first, I still smell like marinara sauce."

"_Bland_ marinara sauce." Oh shut up, if he hated the hotel's recipe so much then Lovino could always try cooking his own. "Don't make an offer you aren't willing to uphold."

"Why wouldn't I follow through?" For a split-second he couldn't remember if he had the ingredients at home in his kitchen for the meal he was thinking of, but the lapse passed and Lovino had time to catch the confusion skirt over Flavio's narrow face again. "Just because you're some big scary food critic doesn't mean I'm scared of you. If it's my kitchen then whatever you don't like ends up on my plate instead. But whatever: you just want your phone, I'll be right back."

Lovino had the distinct sense that the critic he left behind was actually uncomfortable with what he'd just said, but by the time he returned from changing out of his uniform and grabbing his things from the back-room, Flavio had all of that tucked secretly behind his paper smile again.

That was why he seemed so light all the time, almost one-dimensional and flat: that smile. It wasn't the same as when he'd been a firm, stumbling presence laughing off the wine last night, it was too-pale hair and too-dark lenses, the glaring panels of his suit instead of the softer shades of street-lamps and sunlight.

For some reason they walked from the hotel to Lovino's apartment, because just like in Rome Lovino rode a bicycle to and from work. They could have stuffed the bike in the back of a taxi, but Flavio declined and they walked instead.

"You aren't afraid of me?" Was the forced question he asked when they were about half-way there with a soft breeze and plenty of room on the side-walk. "You seemed terrified yesterday."

"I thought I was getting fired yesterday." So again, no, Lovino wasn't scared. "Listen: I'm cooking for myself when I get home anyways, and you've put that pasta in my head so that's what I'm going to make. I don't give a shit if you want to stay or not, but I _like_ not eating alone."

So, stay.

If he wanted to.

Or something.

"Last night was fun, so whatever."

Flavio didn't give him a straight answer the rest of the way there, so by some unspoken agreement they stopped at a shop so Lovino could grab the fresh vegetables he didn't have sitting in his fridge back home. While he was busy with the produce, Flavio vanished somewhere inside and they paid for their purchases separately.

Flavio kept the two bottles of wine wrapped up until Lovino finally guess correctly that one of them had been at the restaurant last night, and the other was only revealed when he pissed the blond off by naming Californian and French wines in a maddening attempt to get the name from him.

His phone was found on Lovino's bedroom floor, but only after Lovino used his own cell to call the blasted thing in an effort to find it faster.

Without asking permission, he saved the contact information because, you know, why not? Professional development and all that shit.

His guest vanished into his own little world of missed phone calls and frantic e-mails, locking himself in the bedroom with his phone while Lovino kept to his kitchen and started the recipe that reminded him enough of Nonna that it almost hurt to eat alone.

And maybe it was a little intimidating to have a food critic more or less agreeing to eat at his table. So maybe Lovino did a quick run around his living room while the heavy pot bubbled and simmered on the stove, shoving away mail and bills and stuffing books on the shelf where they belonged, dusting off the table with his bare hand because he just wanted the marks gone.

The long-forgotten scent of carnations teased him, and with a sharp cuss Lovino went back to his kitchen and poured together the ingredients for fresh bread in a bowl. Chives and rosemary went in the rolls because fuck him he was feeding an almost-friend not wooing the bastard.

Flavio finally emerged from cyberspace in the throes of despair after being completely cut off from employers and colleagues all day, and Lovino already had the first bottle of wine open to breathe and calm the idiot down.

"That smells-"

"Choose your next word carefully, or I'll shove that bottle thick-end first down your throat."

His threat made Flavio give his pigeon laugh, a concession prize before he asked where in Italy Lovino's family was actually from…

The first bottle of wine lasted them until their dinner was ready, the second one saw them through the meal itself. Flavio didn't comment once on the food, but when the wine ran out and they both remembered how awful their hang-overs had been that morning, another taxi was called while the peacock safely tucked his phone in his jacket pocket and made sure nothing else of value was left behind.

"Alright, enough with the fucking suspense." Lovino walked him down to the front of the building to wait for the taxi, it was just fucking polite.

"Is something wrong?"

"The meal, asshole. Was it terrible?" Flavio had eaten a whole plate, but just the one. Lovino just stood with his shoulders resting on the wall of his building, ankles crossed and arms folded. Next to him, Flavio had his hands in his pockets, eyes sliding this way and that over the dark buildings hedged across the street from the apartment. "Let me guess: _too much_ acid?"

"Freshly baked bread is always delicious," the comment was off-hand and nearly off-topic, because Lovino was _not_ talking about the bread. "And the soft crust was certainly appreciated."

"For God's sake: it was _good_, it was _bad_. I don't need an essay." He probably wouldn't understand one anyways given the kind of language Flavio enjoyed so much. Lovino'd have to start studying again if he wanted to keep having these exchanges with him.

Because yeah, he kinda did want to keep doing this, at least for a little while.

Flavio was silent until they saw the headlights for the taxi, Lovino too tired and full of good food to be all that bothered by it. The man had thrown a fit in the hotel dining room about onions and vinegar, the fact that he hadn't thrown his wine in Lovino's face probably meant it was at least a D+.

"It was unrefined." See? D- then. "But exquisite."

Wha-

Flavio was looking at him, but Lovino couldn't see his face because of the glare from the taxi's headlights. The white beams hit his glasses and highlighted the edge of his face, long and narrow and probably not all that attractive if stripped of the accessories and fine clothes.

The harshest food and restaurant critic in Naples climbed into his taxi with a polite and simple "good night", and the youngest and least-experienced chef from the Neapolitan Empress Margarita Hotel stood there, shaking, until that word stopped ringing in his ears.

_Exquisite._

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**And that's chapter twelve! Next chapter I'm going to try and work one of his brothers back into things, so hopefully my plot won't slow down too much.**

**If you read it, review it? Leave a comment below and I'll see you soon!**


	13. Dancing On The Edge Of Something (Romac)

**Caruso, Good Life,**

**Eeeey, fast update!**

**Something I said on tumblr bears repeating here: you could pretty much take every 2-3 chapters of this story and make them into their own 2/3-shot story. Instead of cluttering up my archive with tiny Cooking-AU things, I just put them all in one story? Bleeh...**

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_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

Dancing On the Edge of Something

Establishing a relationship with Flavio, even a strange one like theirs, was one of Lovino's better moves in life. His first love was no longer this emotional vacuum in his life and memories, because although he would never have classified Flavio as someone he felt love for, if nothing else, being around him finally put Antonio in a context.

Antonio had been about passion and adventure. He'd been Lovino taking a fast and desperate plunge into waters too hot and cold at the same time to survive in. Lovino had been forced to swim for his life and climb out before Antonio could drown him, because the exhilaration had been addicting, and that addiction had threatened to compromise who he was.

Flavio was something like temperance, and it was all about the dance. Everything was touch-and-go, half-spoken and open to interpretation. Mistakes were hard to make because neither of them ever moved far enough at once to do more than wobble or lean too close to the edge.

For simplicity's sake the critic was bisexual: that was the label Lovino understood so that was what he used, letting Flavio's insistence and explanation of the twelve dozen other labels and alignments go in one ear and out the other. He really didn't give two shakes about pan-demi-bi-a-romantic-sexuality, he didn't know what 'cis-' meant or what the different flags were for, and on purpose he even pissed Flavio off one time by telling him about the only two flags that mattered:

"The Stars-and-Stripes and the Tricolour. That's it."

"That's _ignorance._"

"_Oh say can you seeee, by the dawn's early liiight!"_

Despite his insistence and obvious dedication to labels and distinctions, actually defining their relationship was part of the dance: it was unspoken, unseen. Lovino couldn't just stand up and demand Flavio clarify when they moved from acquaintances to friends, or friends to boyfriends, or anything like that because he wasn't even sure if they hit every step along the gradient of growing closer. Did they ever even make it to boyfriends?

The first kiss happened once, by accident- or by frustration. Lovino was cooking for them in Flavio's kitchen, an ultra-modern set-up with white countertops and glass surfaces and a place for everything and everything in its place. As cooking spaces went, it was about the best Lovino had ever seen and he was inappropriately eager to cook for his friend if it meant being able to get near that gas range and his lovely, _lovely_ marble countertops.

The countertops that took Flavio's weight so easily when Lovino pushed him back against one, because he was frustrated with the bastard for not giving back the spoon he'd been using to stir and taste the sauce for their dinner. Since he couldn't get the spoon back, he took the smear of sauce on one full lip with both of his, cold marble under his hands and a misleadingly firm body trapped against him.

Worth it.

"Needs more lemon, I think."

And then they somehow went back to just friends for a few weeks, drifting all the way to professional acquaintances until summer hit, and Lovino needed Flavio's expertise with Naples' restaurant scene.

"Gelato." That was all he said into the phone, desperate and dying in heat that was so much worse than what he'd gone through in Rome. "Or ice cream, I don't give a shit. Someplace with something cold that I can just put in my mouth and leave there."

"_I…_" HE DIDN'T CARE HOW WRONG IT SOUNDED HE WAS COOKING IN HIS OWN SKIN HE WAS GOING TO DIE FLAVIO DO SOMETHING. "_I can think of several places."_

Several places that took a day to see all of, trying flavours Lovino had never heard of or thought about, and finally maybe forcing him to give up a life-long love of American ice cream. From too much sweet to just sweet enough, Gelato won him over.

"It's too hot for this…" And that day of watching Lovino suck and lick and swallow treats that were so sweet and creamy finally maybe forced something to break in Flavio.

"_Shh,_ just trust me…" It didn't feel like sex- that is it _felt- _well, it felt intimate. It felt like something Lovino would rather die than talk about with anyone else. It made sense of all the dancing and the sideways communication, because to do the things they did required more than just verbal confirmation. Knowing looks and touches and the way voices rose and fell, sensing when to touch or fight back or bite off.

Experiencing the kinds of things a body- _his_ body, could do without his control but somehow still with consent. The sorts of things that made him forget about the heat completely and left him shivering and torn between asking for more or making it stop.

It was intimate.

It was _private_.

And it felt so, so good…

But it wasn't quite what Lovino thought of when he thought of sex.

Invisible lines made it possible for him to transition smoothly from intimacy like that to working as usual the next day in the kitchen, because it wasn't his boyfriend schmoozing with the big-shots in the dining room, it was just some fancy critic standing out with all the other fancy critics.

"Don't let Santiago know." A fancy critic who was more street-smart than Lovino had initially given him credit for. "Not even those wonderful taste buds of yours will protect you if he finds out about you. He's such an ogre, positively medieval, but that's simply how it is with him." Fucking up for the critic hadn't gotten Lovino fired, but _fucking_ him definitely would.

Maybe it was a sign of how much Lovino had grown up that instead of being scared and quaking in the shadows whenever his boss was around, the warning pissed him off. It meant something that instead of running like a mouse when he noticed more and more of the kinds of things the Chef let slip about faggots and boy-lovers, Lovino got mad. He got _offended_.

Fuck you, you bigoted piece of shit.

Maybe it showed how much Lovino had changed, willingly or not, when he mentally prepared himself over and over again for exactly how he'd come out and tear down Santiago some day for the shit he said between menu workshops and schedule changes. Maybe he'd be cool and blunt, maybe he'd throw shit at the fan and watch it explode, something subtle- something firm.

Something that wasn't making up stories about fake girlfriends or pretending to flirt with the waitresses.

He'd _changed_.

"_Do you get any vacation time with your job?"_ He'd changed so much that it was hard to remember that there were people back home, people Lovino kept finding it harder and harder to make time for.

"A few weeks, a friend and I were thinking of going to Paris." Flavio was _horrified_ with the fact that Lovino had never taken the trains or even flown beyond Italy's borders into Europe. "Is Feliciano home for summer break yet?"

Lovino and Feliciano kept in regular contact by e-mail, Lovino forced himself to try and remember to call home every month to their grandparents. Sometimes Carlino was there to speak to him over the phone, but usually…

"_Oh yes he's here. Carlino is out though…"_ Lovino checked his watch, then opened his phone and looked down at the world-clock function on the screen.

"It's ten thirty back home."

"_Yes…_"

"Is he working?"

"_No, not really._" Not really? Lovino had spent his years in high school working in restaurants, Feliciano had stayed out with friends for study parties: neither of them had ever stayed out past ten o'clock on a school night. What were his marks like? "_He has them._"

"Nonna."

"_He's sixteen, Lovino, it's a hard age…_"

That was true, but it felt like an excuse to him. The fact that his Nonna refused to really say much of anything didn't make it any easier to put down.

"_Carlino? He's fine!_" And Feliciano was an unhelpful piece of shit too. "_A little moody, always hungry, but nothing to worry about!"_ It didn't feel like a lie but it didn't seem like the truth either. "_He's as tall as I am! You're the short one now, Lovino!"_

"Fuck you I'll always be taller." He was the eldest brother, damn it. "Look, when he gets home just tell him I'll try calling again on the weekend, okay?"

"_Sounds good! I'll talk to you soon, bye-bye!"_

But Lovino didn't catch Carlino that weekend.

Or the week after that.

And out of all the e-mails he sent only one out of every five got an answer. And they were shitty answers.

_How's school going?_

Good.

_Feli said you're getting taller, does that mean you can reach the snack shelf on your own?_

Yes.

Lovino even went so far as to write out a long e-mail demanding to know if his brother was on drugs, if he'd gotten mixed up in crime, if he was dating or had knocked-up a girl, if he'd lost his religion or had gotten in a fight with Nonno because

_for fuck's sake just talk to me!_

…but he deleted that one without sending it, and the same thing went for all of its later incarnations that all basically said the same thing.

As far as personal matters went, he was comfortable in Naples. His apartment was nice, his wages were solid, his relationship was unorthodox and almost non-existent, but still left him satisfied in ways that left Lovino alone when he wanted to be and in company when he needed it.

He learned more about cooking from Flavio, or rather he learned more by cooking _for_ Flavio, than he arguably did from the Empress' kitchen anymore. His technical skills were strong and to keep them sharp and shining he needed the nightly grind on the industrial stove-tops, fighting to keep the rhythm of the restaurant's heart stable. His creative side was given room to breathe when he had more than just himself to cook for outside the restaurant, because Flavio wouldn't let him get comfortable.

The idiot blond had the culinary attention span of a puppy. He was only interested in something so long as it was different or new or he hadn't seen it in a while. He _forced_ Lovino to improve on recipes that were just good, and to coax new flavours out of over-done ingredients. He was probably the very best thing to ever happen to him career-wise, but he wasn't family.

And arguably neither of them wanted him to be.

Summer was half-gone when Lovino finally went to his bank and opened up the account with Carlino's college money in it, not to take any of it out, but just to look at the number.

The amount was half of every pay-check for two years straight, for skilled labour, in Euros.

He asked the clerk to convert the number into American dollars and wrote the new number down on a slip of paper. Lovino then took a long, slow, three hour walk around Naples.

The industrial shore of the Mediterranean wasn't as beautiful in this decade as it had been a few before, too much trash and pollution sweltering in the heat and poisoning the barrier between land and sea. It reminded him of just how far away from home he was knowing the body of water surrounding him was separated over and over again from the rivers and lakes running through the city where he'd grown up.

By the end of that long walk Lovino ducked into a pharmacy and bought a pack of condoms, and on the way to a nicer side of town he picked up a bottle of his almost-boyfriend's favourite wine.

"Well, this is unexpected…" So was seeing Flavio stand there at the door to his condo without his scarf or jacket, honestly giving the impression that he'd spent an entire day inside not being a condescending douchebag to anybody.

"Are you busy tonight?" Lovino didn't want to take him out to dinner, and he hadn't brought flowers because that wasn't how they worked and Flavio didn't like dead plants in his house anyways.

"If I was then those plans have completely slipped my mind and I will have to apologize." But he would do the apologizing later, because right now there was something working its way up behind Flavio's paper mask, a kind of greedy pleasure that revealed itself more through the way he rubbed his fingers together side-by-side on one hand, or the barely there curl of his tongue behind his teeth. "Won't you come inside?"

Lovino didn't hesitate. He'd already been more forward right now than they usually were with each other, so as he stepped inside he transferred both bags he was carrying to one hand, freeing up the other so he could reach out and let Flavio decide if he was going to let him do what he wanted.

And the blond one consented, because he didn't step away when Lovino touched his face and then hooked that hand behind his head. He pulled him in for a kiss that Flavio closed his eyes for and then responded to willingly, the door swinging shut behind him with a sigh before Lovino felt himself being inched backwards.

He twisted his shoulders until he felt the bottom of the wine bottle hit the tile floor, letting it drop without breaking and freeing up his other hand as he was backed up against the door. And it felt good.

It felt good because it was closer to what Lovino was used to, to what he was experienced with. Convincing Flavio to kiss him privately like this wasn't difficult, but it required Lovino make the first unquestionable move and _that_ was where he struggled.

So it worked out well that his soft lips were so warm, and one kiss was really a series of touches and gentle pulls, the tingling grain of tongue against lip and almost floral delicacy of having his mouth caressed and coaxed open. It was easy to not notice the hands that came wandering up his chest, prying greedily through his shirt and pushing away the light summer jacket he'd worn just to keep the sun off his back. Flavio didn't let the jacket hit the floor as it was folded down Lovino's back, catching it with one hand and tossing it off somewhere over a chair or couch.

Flavio didn't kiss to distract or shut him up, didn't slam him against the wall to keep him in place and overwhelm him. The kisses were as much a reward as the touches, and the wall was just something for Lovino to lean on so he didn't lose his footing completely and fall to the floor.

"You've _improved._" Flavio's stupid laugh just pissed him off though, because yes he had improved, because he'd tried to learn, because kisses like his were worth figuring out how to give back. Flavio stopped them with a finger under Lovino's chin, lips hovering and body pressing against him. Lovino wasn't even in the mood to care how tonight happened, one hand on the small of the other man's back pulling his hips closer, his feet planted far enough apart to make the offer known.

"Are you going to tell me what's wrong before we go any further?"

"You're seriously telling me you'd rather talk about personal shit than distract me from it?"

"Of course not." Then why were they even discussing this? "Hush now, I'll gladly give you all the slow, simple vanilla sex you need to survive this crisis of yours in one piece."

"I'd rather have _hard_ vanilla-"

"I'm not finished." Lovino closed his mouth around the words, not good with shutting up but used to it if it meant getting his way. The way Flavio looked him up and down like he was evaluating Lovino's physique, then moved in with those lips over his and Lovino giving in the way the other man liked so much… The kiss and the slow, powerful rock of their hips moving together once cooled his temper towards the talking, because Flavio really did know the best way to get two people off at once.

"As I was saying-" Lovino almost interrupted again to say no: no saying, no talking. But he let Flavio have his way and opened his eyes again to look at him, arms hooked over the other man's shoulders now as he made himself listen. "Of course we can do all of those wonderful things, but since when do you throw yourself at someone like this? Even if it's me?"

"It's a small crisis, barely counts as one." So he'd really rather kiss than talk, and that was what he tried to do.

Flavio's gloved hand found its way into Lovino's hair, gripped hard against his scalp, and before he could whine about how much he didn't need this shit right now his head was forced back and the kiss was successfully denied. Flavio's lips on his throat killed the rest of his complaint, invasive hands and toe-curling shocks making him forget what they were even talking about.

Forgetting was what he wanted. He wanted, just for a little while between white walls and cotton sheets, not to remember anything. No thinking, just experiencing and enjoying, nothing to fret over in the haze of sex. He wanted that, because even when it left him dozing on foam pillows and comfortably resting face-down on his sometimes-lover's bed, it took everything else out of his hands.

Carlino's well-being, his family's secret-keeping, his scrimping and his saving, the way he couldn't tell which way his career was going because he once again didn't know where his life was going.

"If you think I'm letting you drink red wine on Egyptian cotton sheets, you're dead wrong."

There wasn't any point in worrying about those things when Lovino's immediate concerns were figuring out which limb could support how much weight to move him from the condo's bedroom into the living room. Wrapping himself in one of those Egyptian cotton sheets just earned him a huff from his host and a place to sit on the couch, and the wine Lovino had learned to enjoy eased them into a hazy after-glow conversation about nothing important.

Nothing important to Lovino at least, which was what made it so appealing. He could ask about Flavio's work and Flavio's concerns and Flavio's life and be content just listening to him talk about the other side of an industry they both worked in. Things not to do, things he should probably try, gossip and advice and so many things that weren't his problems or concerns.

"What do you want for dinner?" Lovino finally asked, rubbing his tired eyes with one hand while the soft glow of the nearby table lamp kept the dark from collapsing over them completely. He felt a tug at his bed-sheet and looked up, understanding slowly when a harsher pull made a few folds of the cotton come away from over his shoulder. Lovino placed his wine far enough away on the coffee table that Flavio wouldn't consider it a hazard, then turned back around as his covering was unfurled and his body told to lay down on the couch with his host quite comfortably climbing on top of him.

Flavio had a thing for being in control, for being the one physically on top and directing things during sex. But he wasn't like Antonio: he didn't tell Lovino he was wrong if he tried pushing for a bit more power, and he was willing to compromise if Lovino could come up with an argument or made it clear that it was more than an idle fancy. He was fine talking about whatever would keep his lovers comfortable and happy in his bed- because Lovino knew well enough not to make that mistake, theirs was by no means an exclusive relationship.

Either way, Lovino didn't mind being straddled on the couch with his hands woven behind his head. He was comfortable because he knew how finicky Flavio was about keeping his apartment clean, and how very little of anything beyond kisses or touches was normally permitted in his living room. Maybe he just liked the way the light hit Lovino's skin tonight, the view from above appealing to him as Lovino watched his face, not his body.

The old joke about the carpet matching the drapes didn't apply to Flavio, because after the styled mop of hair on his head there wasn't another thread of it on him. He waxed it off and Lovino's hands still jumped away from the smooth skin from time to time, long over the initial disappointment from the first time Flavio had lost his shirt and Lovino had caused an awkward moment by saying "oh" out-loud.

It was a little like taking the mane off a proud lion. It still had the claws and the teeth and the roar and the strength, but it wasn't really much of a lion. Flavio's body still had the weight and the smell and the height and so many other things that Lovino needed to enjoy himself, but it wasn't perfect. There was no such thing as perfect.

"What's that look for?" He had soft hands too, probably because he kept them in those gloves all the time, and feeling his bare palms press down on Lovino's shoulders was a rare luxury.

"I want to know why you've grown so melancholy." Melancholy? Lovino wasn't sad.

"Screw you, I'm just tired."

"I've seen you when you're tired." The hands on him eased off, then pressed down again. Flavio had showered and put fresh pants on while Lovino dozed, and there was enough shift in weight for him to understand that when Flavio lifted himself up a little, he wanted Lovino to roll over onto his stomach on the sheet. "And when you're satisfied, so don't pretend that you can try to fool me." Whatever…

But hey, free back-rub.

"It's just my family…" Lovino closed his eyes and placed his head down on his folded arms, pleased with the hands working across his shoulders and the slope of his neck. "You wouldn't care."

"No, but that doesn't mean I won't listen." Huffing softly at what was basically an offer to reverse the roles from earlier, Lovino chose to just enjoy the firm touch working down his back- at least until Flavio pinched him rudely.

"_Ass_."

"Speaking of which, yours is so tense I can feel it where I'm sitting." Sometimes he really hated the blond ninny's way of turning insults back around at him. "I'm not going to waste my time trying to relax you if you aren't going to do some of the work yourself."

"Okay _fine then._" So Lovino told him, and he received more attention during the slow, rambling explanation than expected. Along the way something was added to the palms of Flavio's hands that felt so _warm_ that Lovino almost let himself fall asleep, knots he hadn't felt untying in his arms and sore patches in his back wearing away in exchange for details and reminders about things: how old his brothers were, how long ago Lovino had left for Italy, the circumstances around what had happened to their parents…

"So you, the eldest, left home to live in Rome, and half a year later the middle one went off to college?" A little more than half a year, but yeah pretty much. "And a year before that, your father passed away?" Yes. "Your absent father."

"He fucking tried, alright?" Lovino kept his head down, relaxed and then almost frustrated when he had to defend someone he'd forgotten he'd already forgiven. He heard that crooning laugh behind him and felt Flavio's weight shift and settle down over his back and shoulders, too exhausted from soothing touches and the memory of sex to knock him off as his lips touched the shell of Lovino's ear.

"And you wonder why your little brother seems moody…" He tried picking his head up to look at the bastard for saying something so conceited, but his neck decided it didn't want to put up the effort and the rest of his spine told him to let it go. It was so much easier to let Flavio's warm lips travel down his cheek, a hand pulling his arm down so when Lovino turned his head in compliance there was a slow, seductive kiss waiting for him. The anointed hand that slipped between bedsheet and skin made Lovino's sagging body agree to roll over again, fingertips teasing his nipple and spreading that warm oil over his breast. When his legs took the weight of his host's body, he made them spread to let Flavio down comfortably.

"Enlighten me then," was about as clever as Lovino could be before those lips caught him again and oh those sweet kisses... But as always, Flavio's laughter was there to ruin it:

"My poor lost soul, with a flashlight and a compass you couldn't find your way out of an emotional paper-bag." Lovino just lifted his hands a little bit in mock-surrender, too drained to get pissed.

"Fine, be that way…" He hadn't come here to talk about his problems, he'd only shared so much just to appease the man resting on top of him. Drawing one finger along Flavio's jaw seemed to settle the issue completely, but just before he let them come together for another kiss Lovino slipped the pad of his thumb gently against those bowed lips. "But if you want to eat tonight, then tell me what you want for dinner."

His smile this time wasn't an offending curl painted between his nose and chin, but that hungry, pleasurable expression that snuck out from behind the thin paper mask. With a firm kiss that played with him until Lovino had to stretch his body and adjust with Flavio's clothed hips resting on top of him, he smiled at the sound of Egyptian cotton falling over them both and the pleasurable sigh of his often-lover enjoying how easily Lovino's hands liberated him of restricting trousers and waistbands.

"Dinner? _Later_…" because now was the time for strong hands and hungry eyes, rules bending like spines writhing for pleasure… "_Dessert first…"_

And problems never…

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**THEY HAD A FIGHT AND**

**IT WAS BAD SO**

**I TOOK IT OUT**

**NO FIGHTING ON THIS SHIP**


	14. A Little Happier Than Not

**Pink Playlist.**

**I've been sitting on this chapter for months because Grandpa and Feli were hard to write for. But it's done!**

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_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

A Little Happier Than Not

The thing about falling in love is that it doesn't happen very often; once, maybe twice in a lifetime. Some people are lucky and experience it plenty more than that- or maybe they're unlucky? But for others, there are only so many shots in the pistol before you're out of the game for good.

The other thing about falling in love, however, is that just because you meet that person and something about them sticks to you, it's by no means a red string looping itself around your throat. You can meet that person- stare them straight in the eye in fact, maybe even hold half a conversation… and then walk away.

Just like that, you can walk away.

But Lovino wasn't in love with Flavio by any stretch of the imagination. He certainly _liked_ the bastard, but he remembered being in love with Antonio and they were too different. They didn't _'go out'_ quite the same way, and everything either had to do with sex or food because there wasn't a whole hell of a lot else for them to talk about.

So, despite Flavio's half-hearted complaints, when Lovino took his vacation that year he did not go with his lover to Paris.

Instead he flew home, to Chicago, where Nonno and Feliciano were waiting to pick him up with strong hugs and a blend of Italian and English that was probably meant to ease his senses back into his mother tongue.

"Didn't Carlino come with you?" Looking around the crowds of people in the glass airport, jet-lag couldn't erase the way it felt like there should have been one more person there to greet him. He knew Nonna was at home waiting for them, but Feliciano just shrugged at the question while Nonno ignored it completely.

It wasn't enough to sour his mood when he was already so tired and then had the weather to deal with trying to get to the car, but it was still a disappointment.

"It's _freezing_ here!" but not as much as the fact that the first all-American breeze to hit him when he stepped outside was at least twenty degrees _colder_ than it had any right to be in Summer.

"You've been living in Naples, _nipote,_ which is about five miles from the mouth of hell." Which meant that while his brother and grandfather immediately turned on the air-conditioning in the car, before they left Lovino was awkwardly ripping open his suitcase looking for a jacket or sweater to pull on over his tee-shirt and summer shorts. It was _cold_, damn it.

The talk in the car was about the flight: the length, the cost, the stop-overs; if it had been as good or worse than the last one he'd taken… It was all irrelevant information so Lovino turned around in the front seat to ask about Feliciano's schooling instead. Anything he answered about himself in the car would have to be repeated for Nonna at the house anyways, so there was no point.

"It's all here." Feliciano was sitting in the backseat with Lovino taking shot-gun next to Nonno, and he reached out to take the folded piece of paper his brother handed to him.

"What's all here?"

"All the important things."

The paper was a printed copy of a graph Lovino couldn't make sense of at first, not until he looked at the last column and saw a string of letters going down it. A, B, B-, A-, B+, A…

"It's Nonno's job to check your report card, idiot."

Nonno just laughed and put them on the highway headed home.

Nonna was waiting for them and ushered Feliciano inside with Lovino's bag, present and ready to grab the older brother when he stepped over the threshold.

"You're _skinny!_" And then she shrieked the exact same words he kept hearing on both sides of the Atlantic.

"_Nonna_-"

"You're skinny and you look so tired, come inside right now there's food on the table." Not before he got a proper hug from her though, because she felt so small when he had to bend down a little to put his chin on her shoulder. She still smelled like her kitchen and the sweet of something that was just Nonna, and Lovino was forced to remember how much he'd missed his family when it suddenly got a lot harder to compose himself and let go.

He'd never noticed how small Nonna's kitchen really was. It had always been a large space with ugly green linoleum and yellow subway tiles on the walls with a backsplash of square floral-patterned bricks. The stove with four old-as-nails coiled burners was clean as usual, the white oven stained brown and yellow from decades of being put to damned good use. He barely even saw the living or dining rooms because watching Nonna in her long white skirt and slippers scuffle over to the tall round body of the old refrigerator grabbed his attention first, especially the way the off-white behemoth rocked on its rubber feet the way it _always had_ and a siren suddenly crashed through his thoughts.

Because no, fuck that, he could afford a new fridge for his grandparents.

He caught Nonno smiling at him and realized Feliciano'd vanished somewhere, feeling his grandfather set a heavy hand on his shoulder and give it a good rub to calm him down.

"Your Nonna and I are just fine." Maybe Lovino'd jumped when the fridge rocked like that, but there was the sound of ice clinking in a large glass pitcher Nonna was emptying into five tall glasses for each of them. "You can focus on your brothers instead, it's okay."

He sucked in air to form an easy _"yeah, you're right"_ reply, only to breathe out a simple _"No."_ instead.

But the crush hazard in the kitchen could wait, because the front door swung open again just as Lovino was being handed a glass of lemonade for the heat, ignoring the chirp behind him that he sit his ass down and relax and answer Nonna's book of questions. He ended up putting the drink back down on the peeling counter and hurrying out into the main room again instead.

"There you are!"

"Hey, Lovino."

Two years had wrought horrific changes on his little brother. For one: why the fuck was he so tall? And another- why the _fuck_ was he so _tall?_ This was supposed to be the kid Lovino could hoist upside down by his legs and hold over gutters and toilet bowls, the half-pint ginger Lovino had repeatedly _sat on_ in scraps and just held like that with his weight. He wasn't allowed to be _taller_ than Lovino!

"Holy shit, what happened to you?" His youngest brother was going through that awful thing called puberty and was being a rotten shit by accepting it and _growing up_, and that kind of hurt. Carlino still had a round face, softer than his or Feliciano's, but he'd grown a chin and somehow lost control of his arms and legs- he was all limb and leg with almost nothing under his clothes if the bean-pole legs sticking out of his shorts meant anything.

Lovino's first reaction was to try and hug him, but he barely beat it down and thrust a hand out instead for his brother to grab and shake. Feliciano sort of jumped but Carlino's grey-green eyes widened a little before he immediately accepted the handshake, but it made sense in Lovino's head. He'd greeted Feliciano both times with full, fast embraces, but there was no weird wall between him and his middle brother. He could talk to Feliciano, but Carlino had been silent for months.

So he waited for the boy to get uncomfortable with the greeting, which took all of three seconds from touch to shake, and then he jerked his baby brother closer and grabbed him with both arms for a tight bear-hug. Carlino responded immediately by squeezing back and dropping his face on Lovino's shoulder, and the brief glance he caught of Feliciano's surprised face told him the reaction was unexpected, maybe even missed.

If there was a wall between middle and youngest too, then Lovino wasn't going to stand for it any more than he was going to let Carlino keep himself quiet. If he wanted to be a moody asshole then let him, but he was still gonna fucking talk to them even if it was just to tell Lovino to piss off and mind his own business.

"I missed you…" But at least he was willing to say something heartfelt like that, so hopefully it wouldn't be that difficult to get the rest out of him…

"You've got a lot of nerve getting taller than me."

"I didn't _mean_ to…" And it was only about an inch and a half difference, but it was there and it was daunting to get over: he'd been at least a foot _shorter_ when Lovino'd last seen him.

"And now everyone's here: time to eat!"

His first dinner back home was overwhelming, because despite where he worked and all the things he'd tried and learned to make, there was just nothing like a pot of Nonna's bolognaise sauce _made by Nonna herself_. Lovino nearly dunked his face right into the pile of pasta served up for him just trying to inhale that wall of pure nostalgia.

"You could always just tape a piece of rosemary to your nose and-" _Feliciano-!_

"Shut your face, there's no rosemary in this."

But it was something he'd missed because making it himself _for_ himself wasn't even close to being the same. There was Nonno telling Feliciano to sit up straight at his seat across from Lovino, and the pepper that crossed the table three times because Nonna insisted she hadn't put enough in the sauce and that meant everyone had to add a little to their plates. Even Lovino did it, and he couldn't even taste the imbalance she was talking about: over-spicing it just made it more like home because it was Nonna's meal at Nonno's table.

There was no option to decline a second portion when it was put in front of him, but he _did_ argue against a third one when Feliciano asked about the ice-cream someone had bought.

"You made pie too?" _Swat!_

"Of course I made pie! When was the last time you had American cherry pie, hm? _Hm?"_ Which was infinitely better than apple pie, and Lovino would be willing to argue the point if provoked. _Especially_ since after living in America for forty years his grandmother had conquered almost any recipe her grandsons claimed was better anywhere except at her table.

But only one slice of sweet and tart and crumbly and flakey and still-warm and topped with ice… cream…

Sixteen hour… flight… four hour… lay-over in… fucking… _London_…

"Hey, wake up!"

No… sleep… good… sleep right here… couch good…

Until someone (more like two shitheads!) tilted the fucking couch over and dropped him!

"_Cazzo!_"

"He swears in Italian now?"

"It's like someone changed his operating system: he was going back and forth in the car too."

"_I will punch you both in the throat…"_

Feliciano had been home for most of the summer already and had claimed Lovino's old room after he'd moved out. It was actually really easy for the older brother to get his way, because Feliciano seemed to have grown attached to the idea of having his own little spot in the house.

Carlino probably had too, but he had the bigger room and Lovino invited himself in there to sleep on the spare bed, barely cognizant enough to brush his teeth and change his clothes before crawling under the freshly washed and tumbled sheets. But he was still aware enough to sense his youngest brother hovering not far away, and the desk was sporting a new desktop computer that hadn't been there two years ago.

Lovino called him out before it could get awkward.

"As long as you've got headphones I don't care what you do or watch."

"But you're tired-"

"Carlino, my floor-mates in Naples are an artistic couple that can't go half an hour without screaming to the rafters either at each other or reciting poetry: it's _fine._" They also tended to fuck really loudly, but he didn't want to add that part.

His first night back home was just sleep. He didn't wake up: didn't hear anything, just slept off jet lag and a heavy meal of comfort foods that all by itself made the trip worth it.

But waking up the next morning and finding his little brother absent reminded Lovino of all the reasons why he'd come here to be with family instead of going off for a romantic get-away in Paris.

He didn't bother showering or getting dressed before going downstairs to check and see if Carlino was just having an early breakfast, but it was only nine-thirty in the morning, and summer break to boot. When he didn't discover him downstairs but instead saw his grandfather sitting with a lukewarm cup of coffee and the Sunday paper, Lovino was confused and concerned at the same time.

"Hey, where's Carlino?"

"Good morning to you too! There's coffee." Where was his brother? "Feliciano's still asleep I think, I haven't seen him yet."

"That's not who I meant…"

"I know, now drink some coffee and maybe shave that mess off your face before you go hunting that poor boy down and scaring him half to death." You know what, if it would stop his brother from evading and running away from him then maybe Lovino would do exactly that: scare the shit out of him. "_Lovino._"

He had to listen when his name was called, because it came with firm eye-contact and his grandfather folding that newspaper over his hands before setting it down in his lap. Lovino was invited to take a seat on the couch next to him, and he took it with one hand rubbing the back of his neck and the uncomfortable way the old springs poked him through the thin cushion.

"It's not drugs." _Thank you…_ "And it's not crime either." No, Lovino was honestly thankful when he heard those two easy facts come out of his grandfather's mouth. Nonno was slowly giving up ground to his age, a lot more grey combed through hair that was a lot thinner than it had any right to be. Lovino was held with that firm stare as his world slowly calmed down, a little bit of the anxiety that had been slowly gnawing through his insides giving up its hold. "He's sixteen, and when you were sixteen, Lovino you were angry and you were _this close_," Nonno's fingers were still thick and wide, two of them coming tight together to show _how close_, "to dropping out of school for good." Sour, bitter, unpleasant memories…

"When Feliciano was sixteen," his grandfather continued, "he was moody and always following you around like a little puppy, hardly standing up for himself."

"What? I don't remember that."

"Because at eighteen, Lovino, you were still a bit of a shit-head." Aw, _thanks_, maybe he'd go and get that coffee now- "Carlino is sixteen, and if he was in any kind of trouble I'd do to him exactly what I did to you: get him a job somewhere and show him how hard it would be to live without finishing school."

"So he's not working."

"No, I give him money every now and then, ten dollars, twenty maybe- usually it's from you anyways."

"Do you know where he spends it?"

"Someplace cheap enough that he never approaches me first."

It settled some of his nerves and gave him new ideas to chew on as Lovino got his coffee, glaring at the fridge when it dared to take one foot off the floor as he tugged it open. No, he was going to have to do something about that: either today or tomorrow because he was the only person in his family with an actual income. A new fridge was about the price of a university course, but Lovino would have time to make up the difference before worrying about anybody's tuition. He'd been able to afford a trip back home, hadn't he?

"Lovino are you eating leftover pasta for breakfast?"

"…No."

Feliciano's teasing was not enough to make him put the container back in the fridge, and he almost stabbed his brother with the fork when Feliciano tried to amicably steal a chunk of tomato from him. The horrified sound their grandmother made when Nonna walked into her kitchen to make breakfast almost made him regret it.

"I'm not speaking to him ever again!"

"_Rina…"_

"NO! He flies all the way here to eat kitchen scraps, that's fine! He doesn't love his Nonna even a little bit I understand!"

It took up more of his morning than Lovino would have liked just trying to restore harmony. Once everybody was settled with a plate of eggs and toast, Lovino prepped a cup of tea for his grandmother behind her back and she grudgingly rescinded her vow to never look at him.

"Your brother did the same thing when he came home." What could have been a fond statement was more like a deeply offensive revelation. "Left-overs. _Left-overs!_ We only have left-overs because you two are on your own!" Last night had been a fluke with Nonna preparing almost too much for their family, but just barely.

The only person not accounted for was Carlino, and it was so ingrained in the rest of them that Nonna didn't even prepare a serving for him. He wasn't expected, and he didn't show up.

"You, go shave and get dressed."

"What?" Feliciano's comfortably full expression died when Lovino stood up and collected plates to take into the kitchen after breakfast.

"As soon as I finish with these we're going to track that idiot down, go get ready." Lovino would have to shave too, or at least change his clothes, but he was dragging Feliciano with him whether his brother wanted to go or not.

"_Nooo… _He's fine!" Get out from under the table- _get out._ "Why do you have to be like this?"

"_Move!"_

The simple reason was that Lovino's driver's licence had expired while he was out of the country. He wasn't in a hurry to renew it, but he wasn't about to get pulled over and put through the wringer for it either. He also needed to talk to his brothers, both of them, and if he had to kick Feliciano in the ass to get him out the door then Lovino would do exactly that.

"Okay stop it!"

So he did.

Several times.

Until he'd made his god-damned point.

"Where does he go?" He didn't wait very long after they were in the car to ask the question, aware that Feliciano found it odd to be the one driving, but Lovino just adjusted the sunglasses keeping the sun from hurting his jet-lagged eyes as they left their neighbourhood behind for a main road.

"You're taking this way too seriously."

"Really?" When they rolled to a stop at a red light, the older brother made a heavy point: "Because no one will look at me when they say that."

It worked quickly, because Feliciano's eyes fell from the road to rest on the steering wheel, his mouth twisting a little bit before he checked the now green light hovering over them. With a tap on the handle next to the wheel, the turn signal flashed and he pulled them around the corner unexpectedly, not exactly safe but far from the worst driving Lovino had ever seen or done himself. Still, that didn't make it normal behaviour for Feliciano to handle the car so aggressively, the street only carrying them so far before he turned again up into a parking lot behind a small strip-mall. They came to a short stop across two parking spaces and Feliciano put the car in park, foot on the brake and one hand up to go back through his hair.

"Talk."

"It's stupid."

"Then just say it so we can move on."

"He doesn't _get it."_ The way Feliciano looked at him when he said that didn't match his face. His brother looked stressed, irritated: like he was finished putting up with something despite his infinite patience. When Lovino tried to get a bit more, Feliciano bit back with: "Anything: he doesn't get any of it. He doesn't know what the hell happened, or what you were doing, he was just a little kid but now it's like-"

"What? What was I doing?" When? What time was Feliciano talking about? It would have made this a lot easier, but his interruption just made his brother stop and stare at him. Feliciano's arms were folded over the steering wheel, the engine still rumbling softly until Lovino leaned over and flicked the keys to the off position in the ignition, just to shut off the noise.

"…For six years, you were the reason we had Christmas." That wasn't what Lovino expected to hear.

"It's not like I paid for-"

"Dad sent the money: you did the shopping." Nonno was the one driving. "And you're the one Nonno would send up the ladder to get the lights in place, and who had to climb into the attic for the tree and decorations." Any of them could have done that, Carlino and Feliciano always decorated inside just because the youngest brother had been too small to be left alone. "You bought the food." Nonna couldn't _carry_ it.

"Feliciano what're you trying to say?" Lovino was twisted around in his seat, the belt digging into his shoulder a little bit. His brother just leaned back and slouched a little behind the wheel, knees up and feet away from the pedals. He crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his hands under his arms and letting out a slow breath behind the wide sunglasses he'd been driving with.

"I'm saying nothing's the same with you gone." Whatever Feliciano's eyes did behind the lenses, his voice matched it by dropping slowly. He knew they were looking at each other; it just was difficult to see. "But that I'm not surprised to know you're happier on your own."

And it was difficult… to hear those words.

* * *

**Feli said more than he should have, but not enough to be very clear: next chapter should fix it!**


	15. His Brothers' Keeper

**White Houses, Night Visions album, Safe & Sound, Untitled.**

**The prose feels really bare in this chapter. Sorry for that, but at least the update was fast!**

* * *

_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

His Brothers' Keeper

Was Lovino really happier on his own?

"I really wish you'd just drop this." Feliciano had needed a few minutes, leaking words and piecing together an argument that hurt more than it should have, before they were back on their way. "It's a nice day today, why don't we go shopping or something? Have a picnic?"

According to Feliciano, their younger brother hadn't known how much Lovino did in their household until he'd left for Italy. According to _Feliciano_: their brother just wasn't used to doing the extra chores. His opinion was all well and good, but Lovino wanted to hear things according to Carlino before ruling on the matter.

But was he really happier in Naples? Being alone all the time, isolated…

In Rome there had been family to take up his time just like they had back home. He had to stop and just think about it in the car as Feliciano stopped arguing with him and just put them on the road to their original destination: how much _had_ he done?

Hounding his brothers for homework checks and helping chop onions didn't seem like a lot. There had been those weeks when their father was in hospital before the end, but those were extreme circumstances. He'd just been a non-arthritic extension of whatever his grandparents needed to get done, right? Carry groceries, run errands, keep an eye on his brothers… while still being in school, and working, and dealing with emotional shit like ditching prom and awkward Saturday afternoon coffee.

Naples was a work-sleep routine for him. He filled the hours between waking up and going to the hotel by either practicing something to show Flavio, working out when the weather wasn't trying to kill him, and up until recently he'd still been brushing up on his Italian. His circle of friends was small, his days off usually spent outside the city all together putting his footprint on South Italy.

When he'd first received his promotion, and then as he'd fought to keep it: Lovino's time had been sparse because he'd consistently showed up so much earlier, cramming extra practice in when and however he could. Now…?

Now there was a lot of empty time spent worrying about people he was too far away from.

"This is it?"

"I told you it wasn't anything serious."

As soon as Feliciano shut the engine off, Lovino could hear it: the mechanical whirr and shutter of pitching machines coughing leather balls through the air, then the crack and bang of bats shooting them up into the netting surrounding the property. They were at a batting range, probably not the last place Lovino would have expected his brother to hide out, but certainly not the first.

"Is he on a team?" Lovino had his seatbelt off and hand on the door when he noticed Feliciano wasn't moving, the keys in his hands but his brother not making a move to get out.

"He says teams are expensive, dunno where he gets the money for this though." And the dismissive way he said that made Lovino lean over and give him a good smack in the arm for it.

"The same place you get your coffee money from, ding-bat." He didn't seriously think Lovino only sent money to him, did he? "You coming?"

"You want me to come?" Okay, well if that wasn't a defensive answer then Lovino wasn't sure what was.

A few more awkward exchanges and Feliciano told him there was a bus down this road that looped back around to the mall near their neighbourhood: Carlino had to get here somehow, didn't he?

"We'll call you when we're on our way, just go hang out there or at home."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, it's fine." What the fuck was going on between them? That was all Lovino wanted an answer for as Feliciano looked more annoyed with the idea of leaving him behind, not because he wouldn't be speaking to their brother. It was troubling. "Go on, get outta here!"

Feliciano didn't look convinced, but despite that he took the opening when it was offered. Lovino watched the beat up sedan rev and drive away, the tires kicking up dust over the gravel parking lot. With hands in his pockets and the inside of his cheek between his teeth, Lovino turned around and crunched his way over to the entrance, looking around at the signs and prices.

It occurred to him a little too late that if Carlino had already left, Lovino's cell wouldn't work on this side of the planet: not without charging him a few hundred Euros for the pleasure, of course.

A low, one-story wooden building with peeling green paint, dusty netting, and splintering benches that looked like they'd been dragged from dug-outs across the country made up most of the place. Prices written in chalk ranged from baskets of balls and rental equipment to competition fees and advertisements for local leagues. When a grouchy looking old man behind the glass window tried to stop him from going inside, Lovino figured he'd try and suss out if this was really the place Carlino was at all the time. The sign said it was open until midnight, so it'd account for his brother staying out past ten.

"I'm looking for my kid brother: red hair, taller than me?"

"The kid in booth six?" Maybe.

"Does he come here often?"

"He's a member."

But Lovino was not a member, so he had to hand over five bucks for the privilege of walking inside to find his idiot sibling.

"If you don't have a bat then you gotta rent one."

"You're fucking kidding me."

"Helmet too."

Another twelve dollars and an injury waiver later, Lovino was finally able to get away from the ticket box and stomp his irritated way along the covered walk-way, the echo of powerful hits and home-run re-enactments making him question when or how his brother had formed a passion for a sport Lovino hadn't known he even liked. There were no posters that Lovino had seen in his room, but how out of touch had they been getting?

Helmets were mandatory, hence the awful black and green pea-shell Lovino had under his arm. He wasn't going to get in front of any mechanically-powered baseballs, and when he found the sixth batting cage he stayed outside the fence and looked inside at the dusty mock-up of home-plate and the player standing over it.

Lovino didn't know enough about baseball to tell if his brother was squared up properly over the plate, but the short delay between the pitches and accuracy of the wooden bat in his brother's hands were a good hint. The bat had a worn look to it, but it wasn't branded with the same logo as the one Lovino had been suckered into renting, and the same could be said of the black helmet.

Grounders, fly-balls, out of bounds, those all happened but there was still the loud crack of the bat hitting the frayed and weather-worn balls that shot out from across the field. Most of them went where a slugger wanted them though: high and straight, arcing up into netting that wouldn't be there in a real baseball diamond.

Apparently this place wasn't as shit as the staff implied either, because as Lovino watched the pitches come, they weren't identical. Some left, some right, a few so far down that he was practically golfing: none of them seemed like miss-throws, like if the machine was malfunctioning, and the faster the shot the louder the crack. As much as he wanted to speak up, just standing here Lovino had counted eight straight connections between bat and ball: he wasn't going to ruin his brother's concentration for no reason.

His patience was rewarded by Carlino taking up the exact same position, bat behind him and shoulders squared up, only to wait for three tense seconds before nothing came. A careful two seconds to slowly break his tough grip, and when Lovino saw a red light blink and go steady across the field they both understood that the basket he'd paid for was empty.

Checking the chalk-dusted board on the wall behind him, it was ten cents per ball, fifty balls in a basket and to encourage sales they lopped a dollar off. If Carlino had his own equipment then Lovino understood how far twenty dollars could take him. Didn't leave much money for anything else, but-

"Uh!" The confused sound came from the teen standing in the cage, Lovino looking back through the wire mesh at the startled look on his brother's face.

"Ciao, little brother, missed me?" He joked, making himself grin down the shallow steps to the dry ground.

"How did you get here?"

"I was gonna ask about when _you_ got here."

Lovino refused to back down when it got awkward. It shouldn't have been awkward: explaining that Feliciano had brought him here and then left because Lovino wanted to see him alone, it should have been easy. He offered up the change for another basket of balls but his brother refused, quickly stuffing his equipment in a backpack the bat stuck out of awkwardly.

"You wanna talk, don't you?"

"Hey, you're not as stupid as you look!"

They could have caught the bus back to the mall, but instead they missed it by a minute and decided to start walking. As they moved through the sprawl a dog park came up across the street, the two of them cutting across the quiet road to reach the shade and whisper of the trees. Along the way, Lovino was the one trying to fill the silence. It wasn't a job he usually took but he had to at least try, more disappointed than upset when he failed to work more than a few words out of his brother at a time.

"When'd you start getting into baseball?"

"A while ago."

"You follow the White Sox?"

"A little bit."

It was exactly what Lovino had been suffering almost from the moment he'd finally settled in Rome. Just trying to earn eye-contact was a feat he could barely manage for more than a few moments, Carlino avoiding and deflecting as they followed a paved path that turned into gravel, dipping between trees and wrapping around itself as it moved parallel to the road.

Finally, after playing twenty out of twenty-one questions, Lovino hit him with: "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." But Carlino answered too quickly, kept his eyes down, hands in the white pockets of his shorts while his black runners scuffed the gravel, kicking rocks and adjusting the white and black baseball cap he'd tugged on over his red hair to block the sun.

"Why're you lying to me?"

"I don't wanna talk about it."

"I can tell." Trying to walk closer to his brother just made Carlino lengthen his stride a little bit, moving faster and pulling Lovino's hands out of his own pockets so he could keep up. The defensive attitude didn't make him want to back off, it just felt like he was getting closer to his answer: "It's whatever you and Feliciano are fighting about, isn't it?"

"We aren't fighting."

"That's not how he tells it, so unless you give me your side of things-"

"I don't _want_ to!" Finally he got a reaction out of him. Carlino's voice rose as he stomped several paces ahead and Lovino himself slowed down to a halt. When his brother twisted around to look at him he moved like he was going to sling his backpack on the ground, only to stop short with a tight grip on the strap over his shoulder.

His face was what made Lovino stop and wait, because his brother had the most expressive green eyes: bright and wide and right now filling the way they had since he was a baby to show how he felt. He looked hounded, but not frustrated enough to mean a fight was coming: upset, but not willing to cry about it.

"It's stupid!" If he really didn't want to talk then he wouldn't have turned around, wouldn't make up excuses. "Feli's right: I_ know _he's right, so I just have to go along with that decision."

"Decision about what?"

"About you!" Lovino could pretend he understood that, or he could admit that he didn't know what was going on.

"Let's sit down." There was a grassy area opening up a little further down the path, Lovino walking again and holding a hand out to take his brother's shoulder, turning him around so they moved together instead of separating.

The shade fell away into sunlight, a few dapples from the trees along the edge of the small field giving them a place to just crouch and settle down on the thick grass. Lovino knew where they were now, recognizing the tall metal structures of the little water-park over the next hill from them. Kids were laughing somewhere out of sight in the heat, and Lovino just crossed his legs and tugged his sunglasses down to rub his eyes for a few moments, working through the issue.

"We need to go meet Feliciano, don't we?"

"You let me worry about that idiot. He's fine waiting an hour or two." What Lovino wanted to know now was… "What's all this shit about someone making decisions about me?"

Carlino dropped his eyes and looked away, his eyes following the gravel path cutting over the green.

"It's nothing."

"Let me judge that: what's going on?"

There was always going to be a difference between silence when someone didn't want to speak, and silence when they were trying to. Shouting was supposed to work and break both kinds, but for once Lovino didn't feel up to it. He didn't like having his brothers refuse to talk to him, he didn't want to feel like this was how everything was going to be from now on: stressful and upsetting, secrets behind closed lips and hurting eyes.

"He'll get mad if I tell you." Carlino was biting his lips together, working them free only to murmur those words at the grass and then bite them again. He had his feet on the ground and knees up, arms hooked around his legs and hands clasped together. He wasn't hiding his head, but he wasn't trying to look up either. "Why do you care so much?"

"I care because it matters, idiot." Lovino almost slung an arm around him, catching himself and grabbing his brother's shoulder roughly instead. Giving him a harsh shake, maybe it would stir Carlino into looking at him again. "I could be drinking wine on the French Riviera right now, instead I flew all the way home. The least you could do is be there for breakfast."

"I'm sorry about that…" Instead his brother just sulked at the comment, looking down and rubbing his hands together. He'd been wearing gloves in the batting cage but those were gone now, giving Lovino a chance to see the callouses inside his brother's fingers that had formed despite the cover. "I just… it's like I need to hit something sometime, but when Feliciano catches me he says I should hit the books instead." The tense, almost disgusted look that crawled over his face and made Carlino glare across the field made Lovino smile a little, chuckling as he removed his hand and fell back on his wrists, hands planted in the cool grass as he straightened his legs out in front of him.

"You need something that isn't chores or school, I get that."

"But you were always working all the time, you never-"

"I like the energy in a restaurant." Even as a dishwasher, knowing he'd been part of a cycle and a rhythm had been good for him. "A team would probably be more fun than a batting range though, at least you'd have people to talk to about stuff."

"…Leagues are expensive." His brother said it… cautiously.

"Can't be more than airfare, can it?" So Lovino looked at him again, a little behind him now thanks to leaning over, but still close enough to see and make a judgement. His words hadn't gone the right way because even if he only saw his brother's back and shoulders, he saw him take them poorly. "Carlo?"

"That's like what dad used to say." If Lovino hadn't locked his arms, he would have fallen. "Like… money was all he had so he'd just kinda throw it at us."

The silence this time was heavy, hard, and it lasted. It lasted so long that Carlino crossed his legs and then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, arms around himself and head up just high enough to keep staring over the grass. Lovino couldn't move.

He'd never thought of it that way before, it had simply never crossed his mind.

And it hurt?

It hurt a whole lot, actually, more than Lovino could rationalize right away. It didn't send his head spinning, it just stopped everything dead in the water: floating on the slurry of savings and denial that had been building up for… years, probably.

"I'm happy you're happy in Italy, I really am." That little trickle of guilt in his head always reminding him why he couldn't do this or say that, why he had to work so hard and keep himself on track, stay focused and keep in touch, never do anything to compromise what was important. "I just… it's really hard knowing you had to go so far just to get away from us."

Those words _cut_ him.

"_My dear, with a flashlight and both hands you couldn't find your way out of an emotional paper bag."_ And Flavio's taunting voice bubbling up from the cold murk sitting in his skull didn't help him, the words just drove it home for him. He'd failed. In fact he'd done more than just lose touch: he'd run away.

Run away like someone who'd never been there when Carlino had needed him, or Feliciano had needed him, or Lovino himself had needed him. Someone who'd always just showed up for a month or two before vanishing again to whatever life was so much more important than his family.

Lovino was only going to be here for another week and a half.

_Hypocrite._

"I'm not happy in Italy." The words dropped off his lips. Lovino didn't even know what he was trying to say until he heard them. "Not happier than here, it's lonely." He had friends but mostly acquaintances. He had a lover who wasn't his boyfriend. He had a job that, in a few more months, would have had him for a year and kept him on the dinner service for almost ten months, but... it was so far away from everything else.

"But your career is really important to you, I understand that."

"There are restaurants in America, and the pay is-"

"I know you're really focused on making money."

"So I can keep saving up for you, yeah." Lovino heard it this time, struggling with a numb smile and Carlino's back turned on him. He let his mouth fold into a broken line, wrists getting sore from holding all his weight as he sat back up next to his brother. He knew why Carlino didn't answer him right away.

Folding his hands in his lap and looking down at them, his fingertips were drying out after only a few days without constant baths in marinating oils and creamy soaps from the restaurant. He'd inherited the wider set of hands from their father's side of the family, something that could confuse other chefs with his knife skill and speed. He didn't have the touch for light pastry or delicate artwork, but his hands knew how to work.

Work was all men in their family seemed good for.

"That was almost exactly something dad would've said, wasn't it?" He pitched the question in a soft voice, letting it lob across the short distance between them now that he could see Carlino's face in profile again. There was a twitch in his brother's cheek, something that quivered before his eyes stopped searching the hillside and he nodded shortly.

"Pretty much, yeah." His voice was rough. Quiet trying to hide it, but still scratching against his throat.

"I'm sorry." Lifting one arm up, he wasn't sure if Carlino would let him hug him but his brother didn't fight him off as Lovino pulled him closer with a hand on his far shoulder. He didn't come and lean right into him, but Carlino did close his eyes tight and let himself move a little closer.

"I know." And his voice fell quietly, a soft sound that bordered on the edge of tears he wasn't going to let fall. "I just miss them."

"And you should…" Ten years. Ten years since that last night with popcorn kernels and a green rain coat. "You're supposed to miss people." His baby brother had been six on that night, and then he'd been twelve on that snowy winter evening when the man Lovino had always hated collapsed a block from their front door.

Thirteen when Lovino boarded a plane for Italy.

Just-turned sixteen when Lovino kissed his red hair and then watched Carlino collapse on himself and try to hide his head down between his own knees, arms wrapped tight over his legs like he didn't trust himself to let go. The older brother didn't try to break him out of it, just made sure they were sitting close together and let his brother hide the shakes and hurt behind his arms and hat.

"I'm tired of missing you though…" He wanted to hush him, Lovino just didn't know how. "I don't want you to be like _them_: I just want you to come home."

And now, maybe, Lovino could understand why his brothers were fighting. When he rubbed Carlino's back and watched him struggle and fight with himself to stop crying, Lovino could remember all the times Feliciano had told him that he did too much for their family. How he worked too hard, carried too much, thought about things that weren't supposed to be his problem.

He remembered a hospital room on a cold January night with his grandfather repeating the same thing. He could still hear the way Feliciano had boomed at him on a summer evening to get his shit together and go to Italy for his career: to take something for himself for once.

So he understood how, _"I miss you, come home"_ would sound to Feliciano.

And he understood why Carlino had to stop and choke and cry so much just trying to say it.

"Alright, that's enough…" But that didn't matter to him: a couple wasted opinions. "Come on, I'll help you up." Opinions that couldn't tell Lovino how to live his life, they just put his choices back in context. "You can wash your face at the fountain over the hill."

"You're gonna tell Feli about this, aren't you?"

"See, I was gonna do that, but then you started crying." It still hurt though. It hurt trying to laugh, it hurt helping his brother up to his feet before Lovino bent down quickly and snatched Carlino's cap off the ground where it had fallen. Part of him was still ringing from what he'd heard, too stunned to catch up with the plan to call that idiot Feliciano and tell him they were on their way to the mall now, that they'd be there in about twenty minutes.

"You're not mad?" The last real question as they left the park behind, back on the hot pavement and looking around for another bus-stop so they could wait for a proper ride to fish them up and carry them the rest of the way. Lovino didn't mind the question.

Being put in context hurt a lot, but that didn't make it a bad thing.

"You're not the only one keeping secrets, obviously."

"I… I guess."

There were far worse things Lovino could have heard said today, harsher truths he could have learned. Being told he was missed, honestly, was not the hardest or most troubling thing he'd ever endured.

"But you listen to me: you skip one more god-damned meal with the family while I'm here, you idiot, and I'll beat you with your own bat, understood?"

"Heh… Yes sir."

Being told he'd abandoned his youngest brother… that hurt a lot more.

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**I'm so tired from work, have an update while I go to sleep!**

**And leave a review, maybe? Poor boys nothing ever goes their way...**


	16. Red-Card Referee

**Impossible, Whole Playlist.**

**Light chapter!**

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_**Big Brothers Don't Cry**_

Red-Card Referee

Four days later, Nonna's fridge died.

It was inexplicable, and came as a regrettable shock to everyone. The neighbourhood was in mourning. They just couldn't understand how the off-yellow behemoth could have perished in the night.

Nonno also couldn't find his wire cutters, something he remarked on casually while the three brothers worked together to pry the fridge out of its crusty place between the cabinets and stove. Feliciano and Carlino had to navigate the monster through the house, using two plywood sheets and Nonna's harping to keep them from getting a speck of muck or dirt on her floors. Lovino, on his hands and knees, scrubbed away twenty years of grime and gunk from the aging linoleum.

"Scrub harder, boy." If the old man wasn't careful then Lovino was going to start eyeing new flooring for the kitchen too, this stuff was cracked and peeling…

The replacement was practically a steal because with Nonno coaching them in the art of haggling the new fridge was loaded up in the back of their car for half the ticketed price. Of course, that meant that as soon as they finished hauling the thing inside, there was only room for two grandsons out of three.

"Wait a minute-" Carlino was already in the front passenger seat, and when he almost locked the door on Lovino's fingers the eldest sibling looked up and saw Feliciano holding the back door shut as he squeezed himself in next to the box. "_HEY!_"

"There's a bus in about ten minutes!" Nonno announced, starting the engine with a cough.

"I paid for the damned thing!"

"Yes, and it'll be waiting for you to install when you get home!"

The installation wasn't actually that hard, figuring out the bus had been harder but still forgivable. Putting the new fridge together was just a reason for the three of them to bicker over the instructions while their grandparents left for a few hours to pick up the snacks and sandwiches for lunch: Feliciano's insistence on having a picnic seemed like the best way to calm Nonna down after discovering a dead mouse in her ruthlessly scrubbed kitchen.

"But that's not how it goes!"

"It's on the god-damned picture!"

"Well if you'd _read it_ you'd see-"

"I finished putting the shelves together, what's next?"

Carlino got most of the work done while Lovino and Feliciano were still arguing over the power supply, but by the end of the afternoon the new refrigerator was setting itself up while the family went for lunch at the local park. A bag holding Carlino's bat also revealed a new baseball glove ("Don't look at me like that."), and their old soccer ball which was much easier to use with only three players.

It wasn't until they'd burned through the last of the day and were back at home that a small stumble happened, and it waited until their grandparents were asleep and the brothers were slouched across the couch not really paying attention to the movie they were watching. Feliciano was cleverly pretending he was still awake on the opposite end of the couch, long legs pulled up on the cushion and folded arms propping him up. Carlino was putting up a valiant effort not to join him where he was sitting in the middle, and Lovino, who was used to late nights, was checking his e-mail quickly from the phone he'd sworn not to use for calls while visiting home.

It was a little awkward filtering the English voices of the movie against the Italian script in front of him, but when he saw "De Rossa" sitting in his inbox Lovino got a chill.

The e-mail was casually labelled "Should It Concern You", which really wasn't anything special from Flavio, but almost as soon as Lovino tapped his thumb against the icon, he swore.

That was the Eiffel fucking Tower.

"Son of a bitch," he hissed, "you went without me!"

"Huh?"

"_M'awake!_"

But Lovino wasn't listening, half-aware of Carlino leaning over and resting his face on his shoulder, nudging him a little while Feliciano yawned and asked what time it was. The eldest brother didn't really hear them because he was busy scrolling through the message. Scrolling, and slowly filling up with a mixture of jealousy and rage.

_As always the skyline and atmosphere of Paris are_-

"I don't care, I said we'd fucking go next month you impatient prick!" Wait for a holiday where Lovino could take one day off instead of a whole two weeks, and either fly or take the trains up into France for a long weekend.

"Who's that?" Of course Flavio was in some of the pictures, curiously alone in his white suit and sunglasses, bleached hair perfectly combed to the side around his asshole face with the Louvre's glass pyramid behind him. Lovino was grinding his teeth too hard to answer. He was waiting for something else, something he knew was going to:

"_God DAMN it!"_

Duck confit, that bastard! A meal that took days to cure and prepare and the son of a bitch had taken _pictures of it_ he-!

_Although the roasted potatoes would not have been to your liking I must express my appreciation for the greens. As you should be able to see they were of course seared in the fat from the duck, a hearty and free-range bird bred specifically for-_

Paragraphs about that one plate of food: _one plate._ Flavio never ordered just one item at any restaurant, this was not a man who could just make himself a sandwich and be done for the day, he-

_The poached lobster-_

LOBSTER, Lovino was going to scream.

_-was a work of culinary genius, and as I do not say such things lightly it is worth mentioning that the butter sauce was in fact a pristine accomplishment. Terribly sorry._

Bullshit, Flavio. He was never sorry for anything and Lovino was too busy reading over the (lack of) criticism to go with the pictured meals. He'd done this on purpose because he was a snotty stuck up prince who couldn't handle waiting a few more weeks for his own idle pleasures!

Speaking of which, as Lovino's thumb kept scrolling down and down through the pictures his mood abruptly fell and he stopped on one of the images. It shouldn't have surprised him, shouldn't have bothered him either, but there it was and he had to admit it: he was unhappy.

"Uuh, are they your friends?" Carlino was still trying to get him to answer the question, Lovino was absorbed in the picture of Flavio at another restaurant, a glass of wine tilted and touching the rim of another man's glass. His smile for the camera was smooth and condescending, the powerful tug of his paper lips and the hidden glint of dark eyes behind his lightly tinted shades. Flavio liked men and women equally, and he had plenty of friends with whom his relationship was purely platonic, but when it wasn't…

_The company has been equally remarkable._

Lovino could just tell when it wasn't.

"You know the term _'friends with benefits'_?" Lovino asked, finally answering his little brother where Carlino was drowsily still leaning on his shoulder. Feliciano was practically on top of him trying to get a look at the screen, but as soon as he did he backed off right away to his place again and remained silent. Glancing over Carlino's head at the younger brother, he saw Feliciano pulling a face he hadn't made since Rome: the '_I'm okay with it I just don't want to talk about it but I'm fine'_ one.

"Mm, yeah?" Carlino answered. Feliciano was staring very hard at the coffee table, at least he was until he rubbed his face with one hand and sat up again, folding his arms and blinking at the TV. He was tired, but maybe he was okay with it. It was Lovino's secret to share anyways.

"Can you keep a secret?" But that didn't mean he wanted it getting out to everyone in the house. Looking down at his little brother, Lovino shrugged his shoulder to make Carlino sit up again, the teen whining slightly before slouching down on the back of the couch. "I mean from Nonno and Nonna. I can trust you right?"

"What about Feli?"

"Feli already knows."

Carlino looked at Feliciano, who just took a deep breath in through his nose and held it. He didn't look at either of them, just slowly nodded with his cheeks puffed up until he let it out and mimicked Carlino's slouch. If he could have vanished under the thin cushions, he would have.

The way he was acting made Carlino sit up properly, but Lovino didn't want it to be tense and terrible like the last time he'd been forced to come out. Their baby brother mulled over whatever was in his head for a moment before he finally looked at Lovino properly again, mouth in a tight line before he shrugged a little.

"Okay, sure. Whatever it is, I swear I won't tell." Good enough.

"You know what friends with benefits are?"

"Yes."

Lovino tilted the phone towards him again, the same picture still sitting on the screen and hurting him a little with whoever the Frenchman was that Flavio'd met up with in Paris. He brushed his fingers over the screen like he was trying to sweep away Flavio's new friend.

"I don't know who that guy is, but this stuck-up bastard with the funny hair is mine."

The movie's credits were going by as Lovino felt those words hang there, but it wasn't like leaping into the void or being shoved off the top of a building. Carlino's eyes were to thank for Lovino's ability to keep breathing, because they said too much for him to get anxious: like a computer screen after a harsh reboot, his eyes scrolled over the picture and almost looked at him before they kind of lost focus. He wasn't having a stroke (although the fear did momentarily cross Lovino's mind), just going through things in his head before something seemed to click.

He stopped looking at nothing, blinked twice and leaned away from him a little bit, side-eyeing Lovino and looking him up and down once before speaking.

"You're _gay?_" Lovino probably could have said he was going off carbs and had much the same reaction. He shrugged at the question, breaking Carlino's obvious expectation that he laugh the accusation off and say he was bullshitting.

"Yes." Carlino's suspicious look broke and his eyes dropped a little, face softening before suddenly going peevish: his lips pulling back and pale brows slanting down over a green gaze that started burning.

"And you _knew?"_ Carlino whipped around so fast he practically levitated off the couch, not a lick of anger wasted on Lovino as the youngest brother turned on the middle one instead.

"Hey-"

"Not because I was supposed to!" Feliciano finally spoke up, arms still crossed and voice a little too whiny for Lovino's tastes. "I really hope that isn't the same guy I met because-"

"It's n-"

"The _same!?_"

"_Hey!_"

Bringing his voice up before his brothers could ignore him completely, Lovino shut it down by getting one arm around Carlino's neck and putting a choke-hold on him to stop him from speaking. He briefly pulled it tight enough to stop the teen from fighting back, then just used it to keep him close and immobile.

"Feli found out by accident, _you_ I just told on purpose." Carlino wasn't interested in fighting with him, he wasn't angry, just tired and obviously in a shitty mood. He didn't relax at all, but instead of squirming around he folded his arms tight over his chest the way Feliciano had his, and then gave a rebellious kick at the middle brother before settling down again. "Now I fucking mean it: don't go telling anyone."

"I won't." Lovino let him go, Feliciano gave him a smack on the arm for trying that kick, and before Lovino could settle back down comfortably on his seat there was chaos.

"_It's your fault!"_

"_You're the one who __**always**__-!"_

Carlino lunged and Feliciano nearly stood on the couch before taking the tackle in full and hitting with both hands trying to kick him off onto the floor. Cushions went flying and Lovino lost his voice to a clash of amusement and dumbfounded _'what the fuck are you doing!?'_.

Standing up was a mistake, because before Lovino could yell or grab either of his brothers to get them off each other, the swearing and fist-flying were both stopped by the couch itself.

Feliciano was trying to pull away and practically sitting on the arm of the couch, Carlino was fighting to get over his legs and probably get his hands around Feliciano's throat when the aged wood and threadbare fabric keeping them up both collapsed. The whole arm of the couch split, a rent screaming across the face of the seat as both idiots were dropped on the floor in an angry, spiteful heap.

"_Asshole!_ Look what you did!"

"_Fuck you!_"

Lovino stepped in before they could get going again, not settling for something as mild as yelling or holding them apart from each other. The bullshit between them had been going on for months, apparently this was the last fucking straw, and Lovino wasn't going to give them a chance to bottle it up again.

"Ow ow-_ ow!"_ So he walked over and he grabbed them.

"Vino-!? _Stop!_" not by the ear, because that was Nonna's thing, but by the hair. Right over the top of the scalp where the skin was sensitive and it hurt a shit-load more, so when he took a thick handful from each and twisted to make them rise, his brothers stood up yelping and hissing to be released.

He didn't let them all the way up of course, both the stupid shits had grown taller than him, so they got to walk bent over as he _dragged_ their sorry asses across the living room to the front door.

"Open it." His hands were obviously full, it was Feliciano who navigated the latch and knob before it swung in and showed the dark summer night waiting for them.

"_Wait!_" And then he tossed the fucker outside, giving Carlino a kick in the ass for good measure when he followed a moment later. It was like bowling with drunks: he shoved Carlino hard enough that he stumbled and rammed right into Feliciano, making sure they both tumbled down the narrow concrete steps to the curb. Lovino waited just long enough to make sure neither one cracked his skull before saying anything.

"Sort out your bullshit out here!" He snarled, "I'm not opening this door until I get my fucking brothers back."

"What!?"

"It's midnight!"

Lovino wasn't listening, he was already shutting the door and made sure he got the deadbolt in place before putting the chain on too. Standing close to it for a minute, he listened without approaching the little window where they might catch sight of him:

"_My keys? What about yours!"_

"_I don't have them!"_

"_And you think I do?!"_

Fuck that, he heard the sounds of a scuffle again and scoffed under his breath, turning around to lock the kitchen door before either moron thought of that. Along the way, of course, he was stopped by his grandparents.

"What are you boys doing?" Nonno was in no mood for bullshit, half-asleep at the foot of the steps and taking slow, deep breaths before blearily looking around for Lovino's brothers. Nonna was a little more aware with pink curlers in her hair and a housecoat wrapped around her nightgown.

"What happened?!" She shrieked, looking into her disaster of a living room before bustling straight over to the locked door and looking out past the thin curtain at the sight in the porch light. Nonna's whole body went stiff before her voice lowered to a deep and damning boom. "Those _hooligans!_ What are they doing? How dare they- what will the neighbours think!"

"Rina-"

"_Don't 'Rina' me, they get this from you!"_

Lovino considered his brothers safer outside as he and his grandfather were forced to sit down in the kitchen while Nonna put a kettle of water on her old stove, Nonno quietly asking what she was doing with her mop-bucket when she fetched that from the closet and set it under the kitchen tap to fill. Lovino said just enough to excuse himself from any blame about the living room, Nonno complained about wanting to sit in his arm-chair instead of at the kitchen table, and by the time the water was boiling the bucket was full.

Nonna left the tea to steep, took the bucket with her up the stairs, and a minute later Lovino heard a loud splash and two shrieking voices on their front step. Lovino took the initiative to pour the tea for his grandmother when Nonna returned, strutting across the kitchen with her nose in the air and empty bucket in hand. A few thin slices of lemon in a cup for his grandfather was also met with a gracious nod, and Nonno asking again if Lovino was sure he hadn't set off the fight looking for an excuse to replace the old furniture in the living room.

"Believe me, no."

Nonno didn't believe him, which was annoying but after having about half their tea his grandparents went back upstairs to bed. Lovino promised to wait until the two morons outside had calmed down before going to sleep.

"It's… better, having you home." His grandfather didn't mean it to sound the way it did, but that didn't change anything. It was better being home…

Lovino cleaned up some of the mess from the broken couch arm while waiting, firing off a "fuck you" e-mail to Flavio. When a check out the window showed his brothers sitting on opposite ends of the porch from each other and obviously not working things out, he poured the rest of the tea into a cup for himself. It was hard to find menial chores to do at one in the morning, but Feliciano had a stupid password on his laptop and Lovino found ways to entertain himself.

At two his brothers were actually sitting close to each other on the front steps.

At three Lovino realized they hadn't moved in about an hour, but decided to wait another twenty minutes just in case they were trying to trick him.

Ten minutes into that resolve he considered the fact that the two of them working together like that was in fact better than a handshake or a hug as far as reconciling went, and opened the door.

Feliciano had fallen asleep on the top step, leaning uncomfortably on the railing post. Carlino was one step below him and had tipped over so his head was resting on the other one's lap. Lovino was a dick and snapped a picture of them, the two still damp from Nonna's assault, and then finally brought them back inside.

It was a quiet night, not very restful, but dreamless.

The next morning Lovino resolved to ask about the best way to get a perfect reference letter and recommendation from Santiago at the Empress. When he saw Flavio next he was also going to figure out if the prick had ever tried any of the restaurants around Chicago and see just how international his reach really was.

His vacation was almost over, but so too was the time Lovino Vargas had invested in living abroad.

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**Short, silly chapter, but I quite liked having it! I have one more scene I might do for this arc, then we'll get another time-skip and come ever closer to the relationship most of my readers are eagerly awaiting!**

**For now however, I have work!**


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